[WEB4LIB] Re: Java and e-resource vendors

[Roy Tennant]

Thomas Dowling said on Sun, 23 Sep 2001:

>A wise man once said, "I have seen the future of the Web...and it's
>[sic--sorry, Roy] name is Java."

Ha! Some wise man...I'm happy to own up to my failed prediction, 
particularly since I'm fond of saying only fools and geniuses predict 
the future (one of which has been conclusively ruled out in my case, 
so you don't even have to guess any more).

Java definitely did not deliver on its promise, for which there are 
many reasons. That it hasn't is extremely unfortunate, since the 
promise was an inviting one indeed. Although Java is still being used 
effectively on the server side, I'm not sure why. On the server side 
you can use anything you want, which means C++ programmers don't have 
to learn new tricks. Perhaps someone who knows about it can explain 
to us why you would want to use Java rather than some other language 
on the server side. Lord knows it isn't because they're trying to 
keep me from looking like a fool!
Roy