[nunobrito]

Other people pointed relevant pages where you can read: "In 1985, Sun Microsystems was attempting to develop a new technology for programming next generation smart appliances, which Sun expected to be a major new opportunity"

This was common knowledge on that decade.

From memory don't recall Java being focused on server-side much later until the 2000s with Tomcat and JBoss making a lot of stride, can't say I was fan of either. Maybe that is the time when your person first saw Java trying to compete for whatever space was left of web to take. I'm failing to have the impression AWT was ever relevant, that's why it wasn't even mentioned as everyone seemed to be using only Swing except for some god-awful projects in the gov domain.

For embedded developers (phones, smartcards, electronic devices, ...) it was well-established since the early days because IMHO was _easy_ to use/deploy/maintain by comparison to other options. Even looking at the options available today, it is still on the top albeit C++ making quite a fantastic comeback with Arduino albeit continuing to be a pain in the rear to debug.