Rival’s Wave of Hot Java Has Microsoft Steaming
The high-tech community knows Microsoft Corp. well enough to take it in stride when the Redmond, Wash., software giant starts acting willful and spoiled. But the industry is buzzing about the vehemence--if not the target--of the company’s latest snit.
That target is Java, a promising new software technology that enthusiasts say could power a whole new generation of digital devices that might make today’s desktop personal computers, most of which use Microsoft software, obsolete.
Developed by computer maker Sun Microsystems Inc., Java’s popularity is surging. Apprentice and journeyman software engineers alike praise its qualities with almost religious fervor; in the two years since its release it has attracted thousands of adherents and become the subject of hundreds of guidebooks and university computer courses.
The average computer user has already encountered the language through a multitude of tiny “applets” appearing on Internet Web pages--in essence, miniature independent programs that appear within Internet Web pages to give them extra animation and interactivity. Written in Java, these applets allow users to make chess moves, fill in crosswords or access stock quotes and news headlines without having to summon a whole new Web page (often a painfully slow process) for each move.
But supporters say the technology has many more untapped capabilities. It is not only easy to learn and well suited for the new families of digital devices, it is also ideal for making the Internet vastly more functional for everyone regardless of what kind of computer or device they are using.
Thus it is unsurprising that Microsoft is behaving like a constable at the Java orgy.
In recent weeks its executives have mounted a concerted campaign to disparage Java in almost every particular, starting with its name and including Sun’s most ambitious claims--that the language is virtually virus-proof and capable of generating programs that will run in any computer format without rewriting. The company’s online magazine, Slate, this week ran not one but two articles denigrating Java hype.
“Microsoft is clearly saying the emperor has no clothes,” said Cornelius Willis, the software giant’s director of platform marketing, who derides the Java lobby’s cultishness. “It’s too bad so many have drunk this Kool-Aid.”
In its most direct slap at the new language, Microsoft recently ordered software firms dependent on its goodwill--and that’s most of the industry--to remove 570 Java applets they had programmed into its corporate Web page. (Microsoft executives say the applets run so slowly they created a troublesome bottleneck on its Web site.)
“The tone was very threatening,” said Jack Blount, chief executive of MobileWare, a Dallas software firm, of the e-mail message his Microsoft contact sent to inform him of the directive. The message suggested that firms that do not comply might find themselves drummed out of the Microsoft developers program, which gives companies writing Windows programs crucial early access to alterations and improvements Microsoft makes in the basic system.
“That’s a big stick they wield,” said Blount, whose company did not have any Java running on the Microsoft site. “If you’re developing to the Microsoft environment [that is, writing programs to run on the Windows 95 or Windows NT operating systems] your lifeblood is the developer relationship.”
Sun says Microsoft’s actions only show how worried it is that Java could erode its domination of the personal computer industry.
“Microsoft is squawking about Java the way Kleenex would squawk about a cure for the common cold,” said Sun’s chairman and chief executive, Scott McNealy.
The two companies lose no opportunity to tweak each other’s noses over Java. Sun distributes the basic software code for free over the Internet and pledges to keep its standards and specifications public. That’s in contrast to Microsoft, which controls and safeguards its proprietary Windows code with almost paranoid determination.
Microsoft, in return, points out that Sun has applied to retain trademark rights to the “Java” name and to be the sole arbiter of the technology’s standards and specifications.
McNealy relentlessly promotes Java as if Sun is a Luke Skywalker fighting the Death Star of Microsoft; the bigger company notes that among the scrappy Sun’s partners in pushing Java are IBM Corp. and the giant database company Oracle Corp.
What sometimes gets lost in the smoke and dust of battle, say software professionals, is Java’s genuine promise.
At its core, Java is a new computer language--a system of formulas and conventions software writers use to instruct computers how to add, subtract, sort, and display data. At that level Java unquestionably represents a big gain in software technology. Compared to C++, the language used to write most PC programs today, software engineers find Java easier to write with, clearer to read and more powerful in terms of the programs it can produce.
Java is more secure than any other language; properly-written programs can’t by their very nature interfere with the rest of a user’s computer. That’s particularly important for users of the Web because it sharply reduces the threat of Web-transmitted viruses--malicious programs that can damage or destroy a user’s stored data.
Even more inviting is Java’s potential to create programs that can run virtually in the same form on almost any kind of computer--a goal embodied in Sun’s trademark Java slogan, “write once, run anywhere.”
Computers today use a wide variety of incompatible “operating systems” such as Windows, Macintosh software from Apple Computer Inc., and the industrial-strength system known as Unix. Operating systems tell a computer’s chips, memory, and disc drives how to work together. Applications written for any one operating system, whether word processors or Star Wars shoot-’em-up games, won’t normally run on the others without months or even years of drastic rewriting.
Java, however, offers the potential of exactly that sort of “portability” with only minimal tweaking--useful for shuttling applications back and forth over the Internet, which serves a wide variety of mutually inharmonious devices.
Many computer professionals believe that Java’s portability will aid the development of such novel devices as stripped-down “network computers” (in which a user’s programs and data are kept at a central location and downloaded to a home or office terminal as needed), hand-held personal organizers, cellular phones and digitally-enhanced TVs, stereos and other common appliances.
By distributing the functions of today’s PC into a wide range of smaller and cheaper devices, this trend could render today’s $2,500 windows-powered desktop box-and-monitor--which actually contains far more computing power than most users ever need--less necessary, if not entirely obsolete.
“The [only] reason software engineers write Windows [programs] is because of its installed base in the desktop market,” said Patrick Naughton, president and chief technical officer of Starwave, a Bellevue, Wash., software company and one of Sun’s original developers of Java. “Otherwise, there’s no reason.”
Whole families of these new devices are likely to hit the market during the next five years without any such Windows legacy, leaving a blank slate on which to try out novel software approaches.
“There can be an operating system under there, but it can be anybody’s,” said Paul Skillen, vice president of engineering at the Ottawa software firm Corel Corp. “We see Java as leveling the playing field [against Windows].”
Not if Microsoft has anything to do with it. The big company is trying hard to ensure that the PC remains at the center of the computing market by writing new multimedia capabilities into Windows and cajoling chip and computer makers to build in the necessary hardware, including video cards, TV tuners and more vivid sound and graphics.
At the same time, it is promoting a stripped-down version of Windows, named Windows CE, as superior to Java as an operating system for small or specialized digital devices.
Experienced programmers say Java’s shortcomings are real but temporary. Recent tests by the independent firm Cats Software, a seller of risk-management programs, found some of its complex programs using the latest version of Java ran almost as fast as similar programs written in C++, defusing a widespread criticism that Java tends to run slow.
With hundreds of thousands of software professionals working on and using the Java platform full time, others contend, major advances are being made every day.
“All technology development is a marathon, not a sprint,” said Norm Meyrowitz, chief technical officer at Macromedia Inc., a San Francisco software and Web firm. Java is “about at mile 13, with 13 more to go.”
Many of the questions about Java’s strength, professionals say, derive from attempts by inexperienced programmers to do too much too soon with early versions.
One black eye was a fiasco involving a suite of office applications written in Java and widely promoted by Corel. The suite was abandoned after it proved too slow and bulky for the market, says Corel’s Skillen.
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Juiced on Java
What it is: A computer language allowing software writers to develop a new breed of programs theoretically capable of running on any kind of computer or consumer device.
Where it came from: Developed in the early ‘90’s by a team at Sun Microsystems looking for a way to write programs for a new generation of consumer electronic gadgets, ranging from pagers to cell-phones to TVs.
Why the excitement? The Internet’s rise as a medium of communication makes Java’s run-anywhere flexibility attractive because it might allow useful programs to be transmitted directly from the Web to users’ home computers. But this capability is still being tested.
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Key Terms
Operating System: The basic software program that instructs a computer how its microprocessor, memory, disc drives, and displays must work together. Examples are Microsoft Windows, Apple Computer’s Macintosh system, and Bell Labs’ Unix. Java might make these unnecessary on some machines.
Applet: A small program, written in Java, that runs as part of an Internet web page. Common examples include applets that allow access to real-time stock quotes, news headlines, or interactive board games.
Application: Larger-scale programs designed to accomplish major tasks. These include word processors, spreadsheets, personal finance, and database programs. Software engineers are working on creating such programs in Java.
