Java in libraries?

[The Big Glee Bopper]

On Thu, 7 Dec 1995, Karen G. Schneider wrote:

> Other technozealotry aside, a few weeks ago my editor at American Libraries
> asked me what I wanted to do for February and I replied, let's do the
> programming language, Java--it's new and hot, and it would be fun to have
> AL be one of the first places to write about it!  To my complete
> astonishment, and also to my distress, my editor loves the idea.
> 
> So is your library doing anything with Java?  How about you personally?  Do
> you think it is cool?  Are you mystified by it? Do we need to know it?
> Will it change the 'net?  Will it change us?  Can we afford its
> implications?  Do you know of an easy book on Java?  Do you prefer
> full-strength or decaf?

I think if you write an article _on_ Java it will be the most unread, 
uninteresting article written by either man or woman in all of recorded 
history, but if you write an article about advanced interaction 
capability it might actually be useful ... the problem is that you have 
to not write about Java! Java is C++, flat and simple. 

Would ALA write an article about C++? Not in this life time. Paralyzing
prose on operator overloading? Polymorphism? Public:Private:Protected
class designation? Environment variable? The Java Token set?
Multithreading? Type Wrappers?  InputStream? AWT Class Library? Legacy
code? 

This is Java in its mind numbing detail. Java is neat and I like it from 
a technical point of view but Java is _not_ html and at this point few of 
ALAs readers are going to _do_ Java even with javac sitting in their 
win95 environment. Java does not and probably never will run on anything 
lower. The Mac version isn't out yet. How many folks have Sun 
work stations by their side?

The more interesting approach would be to step back from Java and go look 
at a HyperCard stack, almost any stack and realize that Java will open up 
the possibilities of HyperCard stack type of interaction on the net, but 
it will be thru Java and not HyperTalk which is a much easier 
object-oriented language to play with.

You can do the standard article with here are the sites, here are the
training modules, here are the usenet groups, here are the 4 books on
Java, blah, blah, but that's just a sidebar in grey. The interesting
issues are what these new interaction capabilities mean to folks primarily
in libraries who are preparing to offer information services thru the
internet. What does it mean to sites with hundreds of html pages. How do
they plan for the future which is not in-hand but is _just_ down the road? 

The article you need to read and understand is in New Media Nov 1995, vol 
5 number 11 "Dynamic Media for the Web" which goes into Java, Live 
Script, Blackbird, vmrl+, and shockwave, and to synthesize and back off a 
bit and understand not Java but what the increased interaction means. 
Java is _in_ the news these days and we all know that the primary purpose 
of the news is not to tell us what to think, but to tell us what to 
_think about_. We are all _thinking about_ Java for this reason. It's 
like the magician who waves his/her right hand to attract our attention 
away from where the action really is. 

--Thom