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flux@microsoft.com

Douglas Boling

Java One

t's always fun to watch what the other side is doing. I have yet to be captured by the hype of Java. Sure, the language is fine, but I've always felt that the whole "write once, run anywhere" mantra is simply not realistic. With this in mind, I decided to visit the recent Java One conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. What I saw was at times interesting, at times cool, and at times just plain silly.       The interesting part was, well, the interest. Sun announced the attendance at over 14,000 and that seemed accurate; the event was quite crowded. Some sessions were more like rock concerts, with a few thousand people crowded in a big hall looking at a guy on a far away stage. The atmosphere was concert-like as well, with the crowd using almost any excuse to cheer. Actually, the attendees seemed like those at a Mac convention—the same "we're on a crusade," "us against the world" attitude.       I'm glad there is some competition for Microsoft in the OS arena. It's good to see folks so enthusiastic about a system. Still, throwing a pie in the face of a Bill Gates impersonator during one of the keynotes strikes me as childish. If these guys would spend more time planning to improve Java and less time trashing people, they'd have a better box.       Sun demonstrated its new Hot Spot Java VM, which seemed quite fast. The VM was shown running a number of benchmarks where it put the Microsoft Java VM solidly into second place. Given Sun's history with Java benchmarks, you'll just have to wait until the VM is released to see how fast it is in the real world. Still, the crowd ooh-ed and ah-ed throughout the entire demonstration. The VM is supposed to be in beta (which in Internet-speak means you can download it, but it doesn't really work all the time) later in the year.       On the tradeshow floor, Sun had rows of standalone JavaStations for attendees to try out. Perhaps my concerns about the speed of a Java VM are not that important; it was clear from these machines that the bottleneck was the speed of the network. These boxes weren't really running much: Sun's Web top shell that included an organizer, email app, and a browser. However, even over the hardwired network, it was painfully slow to access Web pages. I'm sure it was due to thousands of folks overloading the conference LAN, but it doesn't bode well for big companies that invest in net-based workstations, yet don't spend quite enough money for the network infrastructure. Those Java advocates who talk about total cost of ownership better take into account a greatly enhanced network to handle the huge strain of these net-dependent workstations.       The JavaStation itself was advertised at $699 (without a monitor), which would have been an impressive price a year ago. Now that the bottom has dropped out of PC hardware prices and Pentium-based PCs can be had at that price, it's disappointing—especially when you consider that those bargain basement PCs all have a 1 or 2GB hard drive. That would be 1 or 2GB of local cache if one of those PCs was configured as a Java workstation.       Even Sun has acknowledged that some local storage would be handy by offering 8MB of flash RAM storage as an option on the JavaStation. Not having to download 8MB of operating system and applications would be a nice feature for those who don't like to wait for a system to boot over a network. Of course, that 8MB of flash RAM isn't included in the $699 price.       The coolest thing at the conference was the Java Ring (an adaptation of a product that Dallas Semiconductor has been selling for a while). It's a small, embedded microprocessor (8051-like for those who are interested) with 32KB of ROM and extra RAM enclosed inside a watch battery case. That case is then mounted on a huge, knucklebuster of a ring that Arnold Schwarzenegger might be able to wear. Some workstations at the conference were equipped with a small socket that you could plug the ring into and link to the conference network. The microprocessor inside the ring was adapted to use Sun's Java card technology. Once you are attached to the network, small Java applets can be downloaded into the ring. At the conference, the rings were running two applets: an identification applet that stored the owner's business card info and an applet that contributes to a fractal-based image that was created at the conference.       Imagine a fairly complex computer encased in your ring, or some other piece of jewelry. This is actually a great application for Java. The Dallas Semiconductor ring had the same guts, but ran a proprietary OS that programmers would have to learn to take advantage of the ring technology. By using a Java VM, the learning curve for developers is vastly reduced. You can learn more about this technology at http://www.ibutton.com.       It was good to see folks so excited at the Java One conference. I'm still not convinced that Java is going to relegate the PC to technology's scrap heap, but the Java Ring is clearly a great application of Java smarts. If Sun sticks to developing Java technology and stops wasting time bashing Bill, they might even make some money on Java.

From the June 1998 issue of Microsoft Interactive Developer.