From: cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net

In article <10cpebq$26b5$1@dont-email.me>,
Arne Vajhøj   wrote:
>On 10/15/2025 7:58 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> [snip]
>>                                         Oh sure, it had some
>> adoption in mobile phone type applications, but util Android
>> (which tried to skirt the licensing issues with Dalvik) that
>> was pretty limited.
>
>Almost all the 3 millions apps available for the 3 billion
>Android phones are written in Java or Kotlin. Not particular limited.

...but not running on the JVM or using the JRE.

>>                        Anyway, while Microsoft stalled, they did
>> C# in the background, and when it was ready, they no longer had
>> any real need for Java on the client side.
>
>MS started .NET and C# after they were forced to drop their
>Java.

Be careful: it is precisely this forcing event that I am
referring to.  Could MSFT have come into compliance with the
Java licensing terms instead of doing C#?  I'm quite sure they
could have, but this was the era of MSFT "Embrace and Extend",
where they'd de facto take over a standard ("embrace") and make
their extended version the de facto standard ("extend").  Sun
very much did not want to let them do that to Java, and did not.

>Anders Hejlsberg was actually headhunted from Borland to
>do MS Java. And when that was no longer a thing he moved
>on to creating .NET and C#.

See above.

>> The framing that the web rendered Java on desktops obsolete is
>> incomplete.  Certainly, that was true for _many_ applications,
>> as the web rendered much of the client-side ecosystem obsolete,
>> but consider things in Microsoft's portfolio like Word, Except,
>> PowerPoint, and so on. Those remained solidly desktop focused
>> until 360;
>
>What moved to web in the early 00's were all the internal
>business app frontends. The stuff that used to be done on
>VB6, Delphi, Jyacc etc..
>
>Mostly trivial stuff but millions of applications requiring
>millions of developers.
>
>MS Office and other MSVC++ MFC apps may have been difficult to
>port to web at the time, but it would also have been difficult
>to come up with a business case for it - that first showed up
>when MS had a cloud and could charge customer per user per month
>for it.

They didn't need a "cloud": they needed a large, Internet-scale
server architecture and data center presence, and they had such
things pretty quickly: remember when they bought Hotmail?

They could have easily charged subscription fees.

>>       one never saw credible competitors to that in Java,
>> which was something Sun very much wanted (recall McNealy's
>> writing at this time about a "new" style of development based
>> around open source and Java).
>
>OpenOffice owned by Sun at the time actually did implement
>some stuff in Java.

Right.  So no credible competitors.

>But neither as OpenOffice as office package nor Java as language
>for desktop apps ever took off.
>
>>                             Similarly, investment in C# shows
>> that they weren't quite ready to move everything to the web;
>
>????

The whole point of CLR languages on Windows desktops is that
they run locally.

>One of the main areas for C# is web applications ASP.NET and
>was so from day 1.
>
>(not everybody may like ASP.NET web forms, but that is
>another discussion)

I'm not saying it wasn't a use-case; I'm saying that investing
in the client-side infrastructure to be able to write rich
applications that run locally shows that they weren't ready,
organizationally, business-wise, or technologically, to move
everything to the web.

	- Dan C.

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