[HN Gopher] The End of Applets
___________________________________________________________________
The End of Applets
Author : cfarre
Score : 49 points
Date : 2021-03-18 09:37 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.infoq.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.infoq.com)
| anthony88 wrote:
| Even if Applets are no longer used in the browser, they are a
| good candidate for a plugin system. That's what I did in some of
| my software: just provide a file or url and you have another
| software running in my software.
|
| Searching for "extends JApplet" returns more than 50,000 results
| on github.com. SwingSet2 for example is also using the class
| JApplet. Removing the 6 classes will break some stuff, including
| all my desktop apps.
| njacobs5074 wrote:
| I will not miss them one bit. I worked at Sun back in the mid-90s
| evangelizing and building customer solutions with applets.
|
| They were terrible then and quite frankly I'm surprised that they
| lasted as long as they did.
| jerf wrote:
| A lot of 1990s web technology is only comprehensible through
| the lens of absolutely enormous amounts of money being poured
| into it because some people saw a chance to displace Microsoft
| by getting a runtime onto everyone's system that didn't depend
| on them. This money ran _way_ ahead of engineering 's
| understanding of how to build a system like this, so we got
| stuck with some deeply suboptimal decisions because some suits
| needed this tech _now now now if not yesterday_ to compete with
| Microsoft.
|
| Even Javascript itself is the product of that, because Brendan
| Eich was given like a week to produce the counterproposal to
| having Java as the main runtime in the browser. Certainly no
| matter how you slice it after decades of experience we were
| going to have some opinions about how to fix it, but how many
| of the JS "WTF"s could have been avoided if he'd been given so
| much as, let's say, _two_ weeks?
|
| Reading anything about Netscape in those days shows that A: the
| engineers were smart and experienced and worked miracles with
| what they were given (IMHO, far beyond anything the suits had a
| right to expect from them) but B: ultimately they simply didn't
| have anywhere near enough _time_ to do the sort of work the
| suits were demanding. Ye olde "can't make a baby with 9 women
| in one month" struck them hard... no matter how many people
| they could throw at the problem, you just can't bring up an
| entire tech stack like that in an all-fired tearing hurry and
| expect good _business_ results.
|
| I'm deeply unconvinced that if Java itself had not been lifted
| by this tide that it would be the #1 programming language
| today. It certainly has _some_ neat advantages over C++, but it
| has a lot of massive deficiencies too, and I can assure you
| that some of them are so obvious that I could see them in the
| language as a computer science senior with already a couple
| languages under my belt in 1999. The amount of tooling around
| Java to overcome those deficiencies remains quite staggering.
|
| I find it amusing that ultimately, Sun was correct. The browser
| _could_ be used to lever Microsoft out of its desktop
| dominance. Just not without about another 15-20 years of
| development. And when that development finally occurred... it
| was ultimately _Microsoft_ that produced the web-based office
| suite anyhow.... yup, desktop Office dominance successfully
| displaced! By Microsoft.
| abraxas wrote:
| What killed of Microsoft's near hegemony on all personal
| computing was them losing the mobile wars. Until then they
| had a total dominance over the browser. IIRC IE6 had more
| than 90% market share some of which competed with older
| versions of IE.
|
| Everyone should be cheering on this stumble because we came
| within inches of MSInternet that worked on IE only powered by
| the ActiveX controls or whatever other proprietary bullshit
| Redmond wanted to foist on us.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Ironically they won the tablet wars due to Google not being
| able to move Android beyond phone apps in bigger screens.
|
| Outside iPads, almost everyone doing serious work on the go
| is using Windows tablets in some form, either proper
| tablets, or hybrid laptops with turnable screens or
| detachable keyboards.
| jerf wrote:
| Oh, yes, I agree. I thought about that but thought it would
| just overcomplicate my point. I just think it is... ironic?
| humorous?... that ultimately the whole big rush to displace
| Microsoft was indeed based on correct logic... it's just
| that I can't imagine how it could have ever worked out for
| them by, let's say, 2005. The tech stack simply wasn't
| there and I can't see what would have changed that fact,
| even in hindsight. The web has nearly killed the Microsoft
| office suite... with Microsoft's web office suite.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| How is this sad?
| corty wrote:
| There is a whole heap of applets for educational content, e.g.
| interactive simulations of experiments and such. Those are
| still useful but unlikely to be ported to Javascript, similar
| to lots of Flash content.
|
| If the Java VM weren't as botched and insecure as it is,
| applets would still be with us, at least as an important part
| of internet history and retained tools and knowledge.
| toyg wrote:
| The Java VM is not particularly insecure, its browsers
| interfaces are (or rather were).
| corty wrote:
| The JVM itself shipped with a ton of vulnerabilities, e.g.
| in vendored ancient versions of libjpeg and similar stuff.
| Those didn't only affect applets but all Java client and
| server side applications that presented e.g. image
| processing as an attack surface.
|
| Also, vendoring the JVM itself by virtually all java
| applications lead to those vulnerabilities being
| exploitable for ages, even after they were publicised and
| fixed in the latest version. In that regard, the JVMs were
| usually in worse shape than the browsers' applet interface
| which was updated far more regularly.
| 2sk21 wrote:
| Agree - almost every week, new exploits were being
| discovered, even back in the 1990s!
| cesarb wrote:
| No, other than the bytecode validation bugs, IIRC the
| security issues were mostly in the JVM's sandbox. It used a
| blacklist model in which each "dangerous" operation was
| supposed to call the security manager, which would check if
| the calling code had permission to do the operation; but
| there were often holes in these checks, usually chaining
| several innocent operations and making use of Java's
| powerful reflection, which allowed an applet to trick
| "trusted" code in the JVM into doing the supposedly
| forbidden operations.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| You have a good point: Ken Perlin still has a whole lot of
| great educational Java applets on his page, which he's been
| developing and using educationally since the very early days
| of Java.
|
| https://mrl.cs.nyu.edu/~perlin/
| ketzu wrote:
| The word sad doesn't appear on the linked article right now, so
| maybe it got changed or it is an editorilized submission title?
| Maybe it was inteded as sarcastic? It's hard to tell.
| noobermin wrote:
| For people old enough to remember the late 90s and early 00s it
| does feel like the end of an era.
| anthk wrote:
| I lived thru that. Applets died in late 00s.
| dakna wrote:
| At least people stopped using applets for web site navigation
| fairly quick. The transparent 1px spacer GIF lived for much
| longer.
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| I could write a book on the missteps that killed applets. The
| idea of applets was great and very forward-thinking - self-
| contained pieces of functionality to provide UI that HTML
| couldn't. Web Components are a similar idea 20 years later.
|
| And Java was a good bedrock to build applets on - a safe language
| that runs everywhere in a VM.
|
| But the implementation was terrible - let me count the ways:
|
| * Performance was awful. Java applets performed OK (and sometimes
| excellently if you put the work in) once they got started but the
| initial start-up cost of standing the VM was just woeful. Your
| browser would freeze for 10-20 seconds while MBs of JVM were
| slowly loaded and JIT'ed. People started to avoid sites with
| applets for this reason. Sun never even tried to fix it, and in
| fact told people it was for their own good because your CPU might
| have changed since last time the Applet was loaded.
|
| * The GUIs were ugly. People back then complained endlessly about
| the Applets looking non-standard, which was true. Big a far
| bigger problem was that they were just hideous. Poor default
| fonts (and bad font rendering), bad default colors, bad fit-and-
| finish. Sure you could spend time making everything look nice,
| but it was a huge effort. Sun did try to fix this but with
| limited success.
|
| * Security. The original idea was good - perfectly sandboxed
| executables. But Sun fell to the pressure from people who should
| have known better to provide ways of calling out to native DLLs.
| This was a terrible idea and was the source of many, many
| security problems. Browsers were wise to disable applets
| entirely.
|
| * Failure to respond to competition. People wanted video on the
| web and tried to use Java, but the Java graphics stack was pretty
| slow for that kind of thing. Flash came along with its bad but
| usable codec built in and everyone jumped ship. A missed
| opportunity.
|
| If Sun had fixed these problems I might be typing this comment
| into a Java Applet text control with formatting and spell-
| checking right now.
| cogman10 wrote:
| I don't think security was approached correctly at all, even
| from the beginning.
|
| The problem is they ran in an environment where only
| "dangerous" APIs were blacklisted but otherwise you had pretty
| much full access to all JVM features and capabilities. A
| blacklist approach does not work for security. It only takes
| one hole. With an expansive API like the JDK, that ended up
| being a horrible game of whack-a-mole to try and patch holes as
| they come up.
|
| Applet security would have been much better done as a
| completely separate runtime from the standard JDK with only the
| APIs that make sense for applets. That, however, is a lot
| harder to pull off (at least initially).
|
| Agree about everything else, though. Applets were in the right
| place at the right time but poorly executed. So poorly that
| techs like flash ate their lunch. (And I don't believe flash
| was particularly well executed, just better than Applets).
| le-mark wrote:
| The most fun I had with applets was the java4k gamescompetition
| that for a few years required the entries to be applets. At the
| time I thought there was something really cool about deploying a
| game on a static html page that anyone could click on and play.
| Of course actually getting the java plugin installed was usually
| the challenge.
|
| Obviously the entire plugin api turned out to be a "bridge to
| far"; security was terrible, complexity and inter-op, and
| useability were all atrocious. Not just applets but flash and
| silver light as well
| mavelikara wrote:
| For me, the most memorable use of Applets was Fabio Ciucci's
| visual effects ones.
| als0 wrote:
| Just a random thought. Are there any obstacles to running Java
| applets in a browser's WASM environment using API emulation and
| static recompilation?
| duskwuff wrote:
| Depends on the complexity of the applet. The Javascript
| security model is a bit different from the Java model, so some
| complicated applets won't work right.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Before flash came to dominate browser games, there where Applets.
| The tooling wasn't there in the same way it was for flash, so it
| wasn't the same explosion of creativity. But there was some fun
| stuff out there, arcade clones, etc. I did a writeup of how to go
| and relive some of that fun:
| http://blog.eamonnmr.com/2020/03/playing-a-90s-web-game-in-t...
| aimor wrote:
| Thanks for this writeup. I remember fondly a handful of applet
| games.
|
| Most vivid was Urbanoids, another one of Karl Hornell's
| applets: http://www.javaonthebrain.com/java/warp15/
|
| There was a fun collection at the Applet Arcade:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20020604024000/http://theshadowl...
| k__ wrote:
| Why not reimplement it in WebAssembly?
| iso1631 wrote:
| Somethings have value in existence but not enough value to re-
| implement.
| pjmlp wrote:
| People even pay for it.
|
| https://leaningtech.com/cheerpj/
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Cheerp has a solution for this, don't know how well it works
| though:
|
| https://leaningtech.com/cheerpj/
| layer8 wrote:
| Java Web Start/JNLP/IcedTea is a good replacement if you don't
| need direct integration of a Java UI into a web page. Integration
| with web applications is still possible by having the Java
| application run a service on localhost that the web app can
| communicate with. That can be used for web apps that require
| access to OS services that browsers don't provide but the JVM
| does.
| pjmlp wrote:
| They are quite alive,
|
| https://leaningtech.com/cheerpj/
|
| http://teavm.org/
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| And the rebirth of hypertalk:
|
| https://hyperscript.org
|
| I live, I die, I live again
| duskwuff wrote:
| play "click.wav" visual effect dissolve slow to grey
| visual effect barn door open to page go to page
| "https://example.com/"
| simonh wrote:
| What's the status of J2ME? It still seems to exist although I
| can't find any evidence of it being updated in the last 10 years.
| When it came out, I was expecting it or a close derivative to end
| up being pushed as a browser technology as well. It seems like it
| would have been much better suited to it than Applets ever were.
| anta40 wrote:
| I always think that J2ME is practically stuck since most of
| BlackBerry users (which are J2ME-powered devices) switch to
| Android.
|
| Turns out I'm wrong. It seems that Java ME is still being
| updated:
| https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/embedded/javame/embe...
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Confusing title, because Java Applets are already dead since
| around 2015 when Google and Microsoft removed NPAPI support from
| their browsers (and Firefox followed in 2018).
|
| This news is just about the removal of some leftover applet-
| related APIs in the JDK, hardly news-worthy IMHO because you
| couldn't do anything useful with those APIs anyway for quite a
| while.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The user interface of my current (still in development) project
| uses Java Applets and Internet Explorer.
|
| It blows my mind they're still full speed ahead on this stuff
| when it's been deprecated for over 5 years.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| My first thought when I read the title was that it will be 20
| years before even 80% of Java users upgrade to the version of
| Java that doesn't support Applets.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Pretty clear indication you're on a sinking ship with a blind
| captain.
| maxerickson wrote:
| IE is still available as an Edge add on, it will never die.
| panzagl wrote:
| If I had to guess I'd say your project is either a control
| panel for some sort of network-attached device (e.g. a NAS or
| UPS) or else the configuration manager for a server blade
| chassis. I could paper a wall with the number of IA waivers
| I've had to get to keep some ancient browser/java/flash
| version around so I could access some config thingy to
| hardware we bought years ago...
| Angostura wrote:
| So farewell, then, Tumbling Duke
| micro_cam wrote:
| For a second I thought this was going to be about the 101 year
| old maker of Aplets and Cotlets candy that also just announced
| they are shutting down https://www.king5.com/article/news/aplets-
| and-cotlets-closes...
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| If only the conversations between Sun and Netscape had gone a
| little differently back in the day, and we'd had a single
| language/system in the browser - 'java' integrated with HTML and
| decent JVM sandbox shipped in every browser. Things would have
| looked very different today.
|
| I think better, perhaps a few less web frameworks and paradigms
| atleast.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20070916144913/http://wp.netscap...
| jasode wrote:
| _> If only the conversations between Sun and Netscape had gone
| a little differently back in the day, and we'd had a single
| language/system in the browser _
|
| Brendan Eich said there were discussions with Sun (e.g. Bill
| Joy) and Marc Andreessen and all agreed[1] there should
| _deliberately_ be 2 languages instead of 1 in the Netscape
| browser:
|
| (1) an "easier/simpler" scripting type of language LiveScript
| aka Javascript
|
| (2) a "professional" compiled type of language like Java for
| more complex applications
|
| So, it wasn't an accident, or case of NIH Not Invented Here, or
| corporate bickering.
|
| What they didn't foresee in 1994 is that the non-professional
| Javascript would end up adding more (pro) features that it
| enabled it to eliminate the need for Java Applets.
|
| [1] deep link to B.E. explanation:
| https://youtu.be/krB0enBeSiE?t=24m30s
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >So, it wasn't an accident, or case of NIH Not Invented Here,
| or corporate bickering.
|
| Maybe that's what Brendan Eich claimed at some point in time,
| but it certainly devolved into corporate bickering pretty
| quickly.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19837817
|
| >Wow, a blast from the past! 1996, what a year that was.
| [...]
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19846280
|
| [More links and excerpts at the link above, but here is the
| timeline summary:]
|
| >Ha ha! Yes, the launch of Javagator was a lot like watching
| the Space Shuttle Challenger blow up.
|
| >Such glorious plans they had, then Sun and Netscape started
| bickering about who was going to be on top...
|
| >But Rhino, Mozilla and Phoenix eventually rose from the
| ashes of the Javagator Disaster.
|
| >December 30, 1997: Netscape sharpens Javagator plans [...]
|
| >February 26, 1998: Netscape's Java browser in doubt [...]
|
| >February 26, 1998: Whither Crawls Netscape's Javagator?
| [...]
|
| >April 3, 1998: Will Javagator be reborn as Jazilla? [...]
|
| >Fortunately, Netscape's Java Rhino JavaScript engine managed
| to make it out into the world: [...]
|
| >Javascript Jabber: 124 JSJ The Origin of Javascript with
| Brendan Eich [...]
|
| >Brendan Eich:
|
| >And Netscape had acquired a company called Digital Styles
| that was known for rendering engines of some kind. And they
| started doing a next-generation engine in '97 I think based
| on Java. And they thought, Netscape's doing the Javagator,
| Netscape and Sun are going to kill Windows, Java's going to
| be the future on the client side. Let's build a Java engine.
| When Java got the plug pulled from it in late '97, when the
| Electrical Fire JVM that Waldemar Horwat was building at
| Netscape got cancelled, when Sun went away because Netscape
| was basically going out of business slowly, the team that was
| doing this Java engine, this Java web engine, rendering
| engine called Raptor said, "Oh, we better rewrite it in,"
| maybe it was called Xena, I forget. They said, "We better
| rewrite it in C++." And then they said, "Let's sell it to
| Mozilla."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16354069
|
| >[...] MSFT was even afraid of AOL, Oracle, and others
| teaming up to offer a home appliance (eg. a net PC) at low
| prices and undercutting the PC industry. Of course, those
| partnerships and alliances never did work out. Sun and
| Netscape hated each other, for example. [...]
|
| Ain't that the truth! The bitter irony is that a bunch of the
| Sun-hating Netscape programmers went over to AOL after the
| acquisition, just to be mis-managed into the ground by a
| bunch of "Alliance" managers from Sun.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/aol-woos-netscape-employees/
|
| >Case told the Netscape workers that after the merger is
| completed next spring, stock options will remain valuable,
| their sabbatical program will remain in place, and their
| corporate culture will remain intact.
|
| >"Maybe you joined the company because it was a cool
| company," he said. "We are not changing any of that. We want
| to run this as an independent culture."
|
| Pffff!!!
|
| http://www.zdnet.com/article/a-year-ago-friction-behind-
| aol-...
|
| >Netscape cancelled a project to develop a Java version of
| Netscape Navigator with Sun Microsystems Inc. because
| Netscape couldn't afford it, according to Kannegaard.
| Kannegaard's claims are at odds with the story Netscape told
| publicly about the reason it killed its so-called Javagator
| product. "It was explained to me that after Microsoft in
| their [Netscape's] words undercut their business, they could
| not afford to continue the project, so they had to reduce
| their engineering resources and cancel this project,"
| Kannegaard said.
|
| >That is not the story Netscape told the general public.
| According to a story in ZD Net's sister publication, PCWeek
| published Feb. 26, 1998, Netscape said it was pulling back on
| Javagator in hopes of getting help from Network Computer
| manufacturers such as Sun and Oracle Corp.
|
| Meow!!!
|
| https://www.cnet.com/news/aol-layoffs-slam-sun-netscape-
| alli...
|
| >After the layoffs, iPlanet will largely be a Sun satellite.
| As of last July, only one-third of iPlanet's approximately
| 3,000 employees were from AOL, Sun Chief Financial Officer
| Mike Lehman said. Lehman has further said that Sun largely
| owns iPlanet's intellectual property.
|
| Owch.
| agumonkey wrote:
| The two programming languages could still have been
| orthogonal to the presentation layer. Java with Dom or
| Livescript with Dom. I guess it was impossible to foresee
| dom/css being sufficient for complex applications though.
| mettamage wrote:
| In many cases user or players (video games) involvement is
| really tough to predict. IMO, the best people for that are
| game-designers and their method is to play test. In other
| words, we can't predict how users react to particular
| technologies.
| kalleboo wrote:
| The biggest problem with Java was that it sucked. Java took
| too long (and too much RAM) to initialize, was too slow to
| add features, and had too poor developer tools to become the
| runtime for the web.
|
| Instead Flash took that spot! Only because Flash eventually
| also ended up sucking too bad (on mobile) did we get the
| Javascript revolution.
|
| If Java sucked less and developed at the same pace as Flash
| did, but was open enough that the browsers could implement
| their own <applet> runtime replacements (for instance if Java
| was more important for the web than for the server, Google
| may have bought Sun instead of Oracle), we would probably
| live in a very different world today.
| corpMaverick wrote:
| From what I remember. IE was the dominant browser. And they
| refused to upgrade their JVM. I believe it stayed 1.1 for
| years. So basically, MS knee caped Java.
| jasode wrote:
| _> Only because Flash eventually also ended up sucking too
| bad (on mobile) did we get the Javascript revolution._
|
| If "mobile" means the Apple iPhone release in 2007 not
| supporting Flash, I disagree.
|
| The Javascript _revolution for serious apps_ was arguably
| started by ~2000 Microsoft 's XMLHttpRequest() api which
| other other browsers like Netscape immediately copied. This
| started the AJAX _dynamic_ web page era ~7 years _before_
| 2007. When retrieving new data for a webpage is no longer
| tied to a user refreshing with F5 key or a HTML form
| submit() button, it enables a more desktop-like paradigm of
| apps such as:
|
| - 2000 MS Outlook for Web
|
| - 2004 Google Maps, Google GMail
|
| - 2005/2006 Google Docs & Google Sheets (acquisitions)
|
| These were the type of groundbreaking Javascript apps that
| convinced many that the often-dismissed "toy language" was
| viable for complex work. The later innovations such as 2009
| Node.js runtime on the server side and 2008 V8 performance
| optimized js engine in Chrome just further cemented
| Javascript's domination. The Javascript mindshare momentum
| was already unstoppable long before Steve Job's declared
| that Flash sucked.
| agumonkey wrote:
| flash was adressing another side of that coin,
| presentation/appeal/multimedia
|
| ajax was big but at best it meant slightly more dynamic
| business application, flash made only videos and freeform
| graphics ubiquitous (for better or worse)
| ungzd wrote:
| Multimedia died in late 90s. No one no longer wanted to
| read text in tiny unscrollable unsearchable rectangle
| with "real book-like" page flipping animation and
| colorful textured background. All these things looked
| garish and vulgar long before "web 2.0" and mass
| javascriptization.
|
| Flash was only good for games, short animated movies and
| tolerable for videos and audio (before web video
| standards).
| anthk wrote:
| Eh, no. Bullshit. Computer encyclopedias like Encarta
| were huge back in the day.
|
| If any, multimedia was HUGE in late 90's. You would have
| a CD-ROM for ANY content, hobby or knowledge branch.
|
| And OFC things like Shockwave (and previously, Director)
| made them ubiquitous.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25304202
|
| Reminds me of one of Microsoft's first Dynamic HTML
| demos:
|
| There were two buttons, one labeled "Our Web Site", the
| other labeled "Our Competitor's Web Site".
|
| When you moved the mouse over the "Our Competitor's Web
| Site" button, it would quickly slide out from under your
| cursor before you could click it!
|
| Then when you stopped moving your mouse, the "Our Web
| Site" button would slyly slide right underneath your
| mouse!
|
| Dammit Microsoft!!! ;)
| afiori wrote:
| Potentially it would have made multiple browser implementation
| illegal (as in the android/java lawsuit).
|
| Maybe technically a better platform, but almost surely not the
| Web we have now
| [deleted]
| donatj wrote:
| Rose tinted glasses I suspect. Don't forget in the 90s the
| average desktop wasn't powerful enough to run Java at a decent
| speed and the JVM startup time was in the tens of seconds.
|
| It's never told as such, but having been around at the time I
| suspect JS came to be largely from Java's lackluster
| performance.
|
| I'd go so far as to say if the web had depended on client side
| Java it may never have taken off.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Java's lackluster performance
|
| It also had to do with Java's availability being hit or miss
| - a lot of times, you'd have to jump through some hoops to
| enable Java support, whereas Javascript _always_ worked.
| abraxas wrote:
| JS before V8 was painfully slow. But yeah the startup times
| of Applets were an issue on a whole another level. I'm glad
| we have WASM now so maybe powerful and clean languages for
| coding web UI will be in our future.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > and decent JVM sandbox shipped in every browser
|
| Javascript deserves a lot of criticism but one thing it did
| right from the start was being lightweight enough for a browser
|
| Java seems like it "weighed a ton" since its inception
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| The JVM or the libraries? - I guess both are large.
|
| But the advantage of browsers shipping with all or parts of a
| standard Java library would be that most webapps wouldn't
| need to ship a huge number of node dependencies, fewer
| leftpad Node debarcles and reinvention of the wheel.
| arethuza wrote:
| I don't remember the earlies versions of Java (back in 1995
| or so) being _that_ heavyweight. It did rapidly acquire
| baggage though.
| kalleboo wrote:
| I remember in 1996 whenever you hit a page with a Java
| applet, the initial JVM initialization froze my browser for
| 30 seconds while the hard disk thrashed away. Maybe out
| home machine didn't have enough RAM.
| arethuza wrote:
| I guess when I first used Java in early '95 the browser
| was written in Java (HotJava) so it didn't have _that_
| problem.
| shams93 wrote:
| Applets were a powerful tool in 1997, I was doing stuff you
| need to use webrtc for with just applets back then, even used
| applets for my MFA, unfortunately since I was doing this in art
| school employers refused to hire me to do java for pay, things
| were very skewed back then when everybody demanded that bscs.
| elwell wrote:
| I have fond memories creating Java applets in high school; mostly
| games, physics sims... and later, a multi-calendar Google
| Calendar interface (one of the first times I got paid to write
| code).
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(page generated 2021-03-18 23:02 UTC)