Comment by wolfgke
6 years ago
> Sun was never as open or innovative as its engineer/advertisers claim, and the revisionism is irksome.
For (the lack of) openness, I agree, but the claim that they were not innovative needs stronger evidence.
6 years ago
> Sun was never as open or innovative as its engineer/advertisers claim, and the revisionism is irksome.
For (the lack of) openness, I agree, but the claim that they were not innovative needs stronger evidence.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying they weren't innovative. I'm saying they weren't as innovative as they claim. Apollo, Masscomp, Pyramid, Sequent, Encore, Stellar, Ardent, Elxsi, Cydrome, and others were also innovating plenty during Sun's heyday, as were DEC and even HP. To hear ex-Sun engimarketers talk, you'd think they were the only ones. Reality is that they were in the mix. Their fleetingly greater success had more to do with making some smart (or lucky?) strategic choices than with any overall level of innovation or quality, and mistaking one for the other is a large part of why that success didn't last.
Java was pretty innovative. The worlds most advanced virtual machine, a JIT that often outperforms C in long running server scenarios, and the foundation of probably 95% of enterprise software.
ANDF had already done (or at least tried to do) the "write once, run anywhere" thing. The JVM followed in the footsteps of similar longstanding efforts at UCSD, IBM and elsewhere. There was some innovation, but "world's most advanced virtual machine" took thousands of people (many of them not at Sun) decades to achieve. Sun's contribution was primarily in popularizing these ideas. Technically, it was just one more step on an established path.
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