For many years (roughly from 1996 to mid-2013) I wrote lots and lots of programs in Java. Pretty much all of it was in the form of Java applets that ran on the Web, including my own handy-dandy interactive 3D modeler and renderer.
Then in 2013, Java applets stopped being a viable way of communicating with the public, since they didn’t fit with the agenda of Oracle, which had acquired Java from Sun Microsystems. So I pivoted that summer and started implementing everything in Javascript and WebGL.
Now that I am doing “Widget Wednesdays”, I find myself combing the attic, as it were, for some of my old Java programs. There are lots of things I implemented many years ago which I had forgotten all about.
Of course I’m going to need to reimplement them, but that’s ok. Every time you reimplement something, you learn something new. I’m looking forward to having fun with it.
Correction: Adobe has never had any direct involvement in the Java language.
Sun Microsystems (the original owners when the language was created) was acquired by Oracle around 2009. Oracle has since been the company promoting and maintaining the Java language.
Thanks for the correction. That was just me typing too fast without thinking. I have fixed it.
I was thrilled by your transition to JavaScript. I wasn’t able to experience your creations for several years because the overhead of installing and updating Java was a bit much.
But JavaScript? In every browser, updated automagically!
In the late ’70s / early ’80s, a computer said READY when you turned it on and expected you to start typing a BASIC program. Now? just hit F12 in the web browser and a similar world opens up.