[derefr]

So, basically, JavaScript was originally annointed to serve the function within the JVM ecosystem, that ended up being served by Groovy?

Why didn’t that happen? And why did it take so long before we got Groovy instead, if Sun wanted was imagining something like it way back in 1995?

[ojosilva]

No. JavaScript was a web language for web developers to be able to automate forms, etc, client-side. AFAIK, originally it was never intended to run on the JVM server-side like Groovy does.

Netscape did try to position server-side JavaScript as part of its Enterprise Server package though, but it was not JVM-based. But the environment was proprietary and not compelling enough for a myriad of reasons. It ran server JavaScript in CGI mode.

JavaScript took a long time to actually make it server-side. First with standalone interpreters (ie. Spidermonkey) and later with a full-fledged runtime and development environment (NodeJS).

[derefr]

> No. JavaScript was a web language for web developers to be able to automate forms, etc, client-side. AFAIK, originally it was never intended to run on the JVM server-side like Groovy does.

Sure, but that's not an argument against JavaScript having potentially been a planned part of the JVM ecosystem (or, at least, a language playing a role in the JVM ecosystem, without itself being hosted on the JVM, instead maybe interacting with the JVM through some kind of IPC or FFI bridge.)

Remember, Sun used to be trying to squeeze the JVM into web browsers as well, in the form of Java applets. But we never saw any real ability to script against these applets. "Java applet 'engines' under JavaScript control", could have been the portable equivalent to "ActiveX components under JavaScript control."

You know how modern games involve 1. a self-contained game engine written in C++ or C#, plus 2. the game itself being mostly Lua scripting? If Sun had pushed harder, we could have seen something like that in 1995, with web browsers running JavaScript-scripted games calling into Java game engines; long before we got equivalent HTML5 APIs like Canvas.

Probably, if the world had gone down that path, we would have seen JavaScript gradually moving "into" the JVM; and the JVM gradually coming to take the position that the JavaScript engine takes in modern web browsers.

[ojosilva]

The JVM wasn't a thing you "targeted" until much later. In 1996 there was java and javac. People were ecstatic running the same programs written in Java on every architecture (SPARC, PowerPC, Itanium, 8086...), and even as a client or as a web applet. The "portability" wars of 80s and early 90s were over (that's where C and C++ were born into). Nobody really talked about JVM, because there was basically 1 Java vm, no HotSpot or OpenJDK and no real bytecode documentation. JS was not planned for the JVM. So much that there wasn't even a half decent JS to JVM compiler implementation until recently. JS was a joke until ES3, and a very subpar environment until v8 got fast, Node got serious and TC39 got their shit together after the ES4 clusterfuck.

If the Java@Netscape story came about earlier than 1995 then maybe yes, the JVM could have made into the browser as THE scripting environment for an eventual JavaScript language, because Java the language was not suited for webpage designers to throw something together un a highly evente environment. The browser was the place to be and Java just didn't make it there (they fought hard though with their applet crap).

[zepto]

You actually could script against applets, it was just incredibly clunky and slow, and so not worth it.

[ebruchez]

I did exactly this as part of a school project back in 1996! The applet was doing the computations, and the JavaScript, with this thing called "LiveConnect", was calling into the applet and back :)

[fiddlerwoaroof]

I think part of the original goal was for apps to be written as Java applets and JavaScript use to bridge between HTML and the applets.

[alisonkisk]

Sun had some great people and some good ideas and products, but as a coherent business it was a rolling train wreck.

[Mountain_Skies]

Sun had an unhealthy Microsoft obsession. When I was a senior in college, Microsoft came to campus and gave a two hour presentation on why we should work at Microsoft. About a month later Sun came to campus and gave a two hour presentation on why we should not work at Microsoft. Sun workstations were very common in our engineering program so we were ripe for the picking but Sun never explained to us what was so great about working for them. Well, except for one absolutely ridiculous video clip of Scott McNealy standing on the roof of Sun HQ, playing the electric guitar. Eyes were rolling out of everyone's heads upon seeing that.

Looking back at interviews and industry articles from that era, there is a common theme of Sun hating Microsoft. Lots of companies and people hated Microsoft but Sun seemed to make it their central ideology. As a result, they took their eye off of making great technology that customers could use to solve their problems. It's a pity because they were so far ahead of the game at that point that they could have developed into something wonderful instead of being absorbed by Oracle, with little trace left besides Java sleepwalking through the modern era.

[munificent]

> Sun had an unhealthy Microsoft obsession.

I think basically everyone did back then. There was a pervasive understanding that if you were small enough, Microsoft would use underhanded business practices to crush you if you became a threat. If you made a compelling product, Microsoft would clone it and use their might to make it win.

It felt like taking a pottery class with a grizzly bear in the room. Really hard to be like, "I should just make the prettiest bowl I can" when you know at a moment's notice your head might be swiped off.

[alasdair_]

>Sun had some great people and some good ideas and products, but as a coherent business it was a rolling train wreck.

I had an internship at Sun in 2002. I distinctly remember a town-hall meeting hosted by Johnathan Schwartz (CTO at the time, later to be CEO) where an engineer asked something to the effect of "this all sounds great, but how does this actually make us money?" The engineer was told in no uncertain terms that he shouldn't ask such questions, that he should focus on engineering and that he should trust that other people would handle the money side.

[hutzlibu]

Which why they sadly ended up digested by Oracle.

[pjmlp]

Only after Google sent a couple of torpedoes and then went as if it wasn't their business.

[hutzlibu]

What torpedoes do you mean?

[pjmlp]

Android and ripping Sun off.

Then they were hoping that no one would buy them, not even themselves cared to own Java after their trick.

So now they push Kotlin, while researching Fuchsia, and keep a bunch of lawyers quite happy.

[hutzlibu]

So implementing and pushing Java in Android was a torpedo against Sun?

Interesting logic.

[ezekiel68]

I mean... if we took this version of the narrative at face value, I guess we'd all have been better off with no Compaq and hence no commodity PC clones.

[keypusher]

So if Google had chosen to use a different language for Android then Sun would still be around? I don't think so.

[smt1]

It's too bad JVM happened. Solaris was innovative before Java, which became monetized primarily by the fees. They released Self, SmallTalk, and Squeak before that. I think the latter is still very innovative today, because of it's Morphic interface (it's category theoretic). I think you could teach kids the computational equivalent of pretty high level mathematical physics, which is pretty interesting relative to other standard CS101 intros (like python, etc). TeleScript, which was basically inverse JVM was also made around this time, it would have been interesting if the Newton hadn't been discontinued:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescript_(programming_langua...

These days, ironically, Telescript is a model for how distributed computation works in the 3rd world, and even in the first world. But Telescript basically would have made the lattice structures more hybridizable to project information and jobs within the context of already existent social networks and maybe provided a better nexus for useful work done vs power given up (it was made on a very astute observation about the energy, work, power, time, information, transmission nexus) before anyone named a "peer to peer network", a distributed consensus protocol, or introduced money into the picture.