Client-side Java [LWN.net]

Client-side Java

Posted May 16, 2008 21:26 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)
In reply to: Java Will soon have Video Capabilities & The Plugin is Fixed Applets will live again. by kevdaly
Parent article: Adobe releases Flash Player 10 beta

"Java plugin"? Are we back to the 90's? Oh God, please tell me that we don't have to search using those horrible meta-crawlers, again!

Sorry to be sarcastic, but nobody needs or wants client-side Java anymore. Its time (if it ever had one) has passed. Not even Sun -- it was just a publicity stunt anyway. The last time I saw something interesting within the Java plugin was... never. Add to that the pitiful page integration that browser plugins have, and you have the worst of both worlds.

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Client-side Java

Posted May 16, 2008 22:06 UTC (Fri) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link]

Sorry to say that you're wrong, but everyone wants client-side Java. Even if they don't call it that, it's what they're busy turning Javascript into. Soon it'll be JIT compiled instead of interpreted and it will speed up a lot. A few objects for screen drawing and I/O and ... oh wait, Firefox is already adding those.

Instead of all this bother with Javascript and AJAX it would have been a whole lot better to have built a browser with full DOM Java integration, a limited Java class library, and the ability to accept compiled or source-code Java from SCRIPT tags. Back in 1999.

Client-side Java

Posted May 16, 2008 22:41 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

You are right, but that is not what Java was or is going to be. If Java had had a sane user interface (instead of Swing), some bytecode that was easy to optimize (instead of being stack-based), and good DOM libraries, it would be a great language, but it wouldn't be Java. (Incidentally, it would be close to Dalvik.)

It is a testimony to Sun's technical blunders that Javascript, once the ugly sister, is now the star language for the web. While being ugly, I might add.

Client-side Java

Posted May 16, 2008 23:06 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

JS is actually a very pretty language with a few astoundingly ugly bad decisions in it (everything using globals is the biggest one, and the absence of an easy way to turn an object into a prototype for another: but the latter at least is easily fixed).

It's just that the available docs are mostly utterly awful, so most people don't know how to use it properly. Doug Crockford's video tutorials (especially the advanced ones) are excellent, though.

Client-side Java

Posted May 16, 2008 23:08 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I've seen *one* good use of client-side Java: the little applets on Greg Egan's home page, which are excellent interactive clarifiers of some of the more... difficult ideas in his SF stories.