Re: Netscape the Big Win

At 4:31 PM 7/20/95, Ray Cromwell wrote:

>  I wouldn't be surprised if in 5-10 years, your operating system basically
>looks like a cross between Netscape, OpenDoc, and HotJava. The "browser"
>would be ubiquituous, and local/LAN/WAN data would be treated transparently.
>

This is precisely my view, although I try to call it an "operating
environment," so as to get away from quibbling about what is and what is
not a real OS.

There were reasons why some folks like to do as much work as they could in
an integrated environment like Emacs, regardless of the underlying OS
flavor. Many folk still do, and they read News, send mail, etc., all from
within Emacs.

Same idea with Netscape...albeit with a different focus. And my guess,
based on lots of indications, is that about a thousand times as many people
will soon be doing this with Netscape as with Emacs, or elm, or pine, etc.

Ray's comments about OpenDoc, HotJava, and other object-oriented tools fit
this picture, I think.

I am sorry that some folks heavily committed to the Linux route, or to
Emacs, or to GNU/FSF, or to other approaches feel that their work is
technically superior and deserves to be as popular as Netscape and simiar
approaches, but reality is reality.

(And I could be wrong on the way things will unfold. All I'm saying is that
technology is a moving target, that plans have to change, and that ease of
use will likely win out over technical sophistication. Folks who think the
stronger technology will inevitably win should pick up a copy of a
15-year-old book called "The Soul of a New Machine," by Tracy Kidder.)

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Timothy C. May writes:
> I am sorry that some folks heavily committed to the Linux route, or to
> Emacs, or to GNU/FSF, or to other approaches feel that their work is
> technically superior and deserves to be as popular as Netscape and simiar
> approaches, but reality is reality.

I assume everyone but Tim knows about Netscape's origins in Mosaic,
and understands thus why his comments above are so amusing.

Perry

On Thu, 20 Jul 1995, Timothy C. May wrote:
> There were reasons why some folks like to do as much work as they could in
> an integrated environment like Emacs, regardless of the underlying OS
> flavor. Many folk still do, and they read News, send mail, etc., all from
> within Emacs.
> 
> Same idea with Netscape...albeit with a different focus. And my guess,
> based on lots of indications, is that about a thousand times as many people
> will soon be doing this with Netscape as with Emacs, or elm, or pine, etc.
>
> Ray's comments about OpenDoc, HotJava, and other object-oriented tools fit
> this picture, I think.

Perhaps.  I went to a computer store the other day, and saw almost two 
dozen different packages for e-Space access, each with different 
software... 2 or 3 with netscape, 2 or 3 with mosaic, everything else 
just custom packages, mostly.

And from what I've heard about HotJava (not seen it yet, can't comment 
strongly) there needs another jump in PC power before it would be useful 
at the home level.  Part of why we were stuck with DOS for so long is 
that it was what got the job done when the revolution happened.  For that 
reason, I agree that HTML/Integrated browser solutions are what we're 
looking at, and at the same time don't have strong hopes for HotJava, 
though I would like to see it succeed.

> I am sorry that some folks heavily committed to the Linux route, or to
> Emacs, or to GNU/FSF, or to other approaches feel that their work is
> technically superior and deserves to be as popular as Netscape and simiar
> approaches, but reality is reality.

All dogmas are ultimately Bad Things.  But dogma gets stuff done in the 
short run.  NetScape deserves to be popular; they followed the truth that 
most PC users like "pretty" better.  And they made the best "pretty" 
software.

> (And I could be wrong on the way things will unfold. All I'm saying is that
> technology is a moving target, that plans have to change, and that ease of
> use will likely win out over technical sophistication. Folks who think the
> stronger technology will inevitably win should pick up a copy of a
> 15-year-old book called "The Soul of a New Machine," by Tracy Kidder.)

Agreed.  It's still too early to tell.  This is like 100AD and we're 
trying to predict the Catholic Church of the twentieth century, trying to 
figure out fifteen years down our road.   I really believe that's how 
fast we're moving right now, and we have to hit as many targets as we can.

Jon
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Jon Lasser wrote:
> And from what I've heard about HotJava (not seen it yet, can't comment 
> strongly) there needs another jump in PC power before it would be useful 
> at the home level.  Part of why we were stuck with DOS for so long is 
> that it was what got the job done when the revolution happened.  For that 
> reason, I agree that HTML/Integrated browser solutions are what we're 
> looking at, and at the same time don't have strong hopes for HotJava, 
> though I would like to see it succeed.

   HotJava runs fine on a 486/33 with 16mb running WinNT 3.5. 486s are
pretty much standard. 1995 and '96 will be "the year of the pentium"
Entry level systems are now Pentium 90s with PCI and 64-bit video. Pentium
120 systems now cost less than my 486/66 system did a year ago. HotJava
is compiled into efficient byte-code with the option to be translated
to machine code at run time. This is the same principle behind the Newton.
Since the majority of the CPU time is spent in native-C code function
calls to the user interface, and network latency is high, the "slow"
interpreted code is hardly noticed. In fact, I wouldn't call the
Java runtime slow, it beats the performance of many Lisp interpreters
which have been adequate for "home" users. (e.g. Emacs Lisp) HotJava is
not meant for writing applications to decode MPEG in real time. It's best
use is for interactivity on web pages. It doesn't take a powerhouse
of CPU to put up a slider, "sleep" for an event, and they call a ScrollList()
routine. There's going to be a huge use of Java for doing sales catalogs
and online ordering on the web.

> most PC users like "pretty" better.  And they made the best "pretty" 
> software.

  Netscape software is not just a pretty user interface, it also has the
best layout algorithms I've seen of browsers. That's some pretty hefty
dynamic programming there. Mosaic and Arena frequently produce poor
or incorrectly formatted pages. (or less optimal pages than I've seen
Netscape)
-Ray

Tim May wrote:
> I am sorry that some folks heavily committed to the Linux route, or to
> Emacs, or to GNU/FSF, or to other approaches feel that their work is
> technically superior and deserves to be as popular as Netscape and simiar
> approaches, but reality is reality.
> 
> (And I could be wrong on the way things will unfold. All I'm saying is that
> technology is a moving target, that plans have to change, and that ease of
> use will likely win out over technical sophistication. Folks who think the
> stronger technology will inevitably win should pick up a copy of a
> 15-year-old book called "The Soul of a New Machine," by Tracy Kidder.)

   I agree wholeheartedly with this. When General Magic first released
the Telescript white paper, I was really hot for the technology. I tried
to become a developer, I sent mail to every General Magic employee on the
net I saw posting (one guy even CC'ed me accidentally to his manager
saying they should hire me). I did searches in the media for any
mention of it. Harry Hawk even had dinner with the VP of Product Development
at General Magic. Alas, they would not give out alphas/betas of the 
development environment, which is all the same, because they don't know
how to market Telescript and make it a defacto standard. Instead of charging
for the interpreter/server, they should have given away the servers and
development stuff for free, or near free, and made their money by selling
services and clients (personal digital assistants using Magic Cap and
Telescript). The result is that no one uses Telescript except AT&T.
If I had gotten my hands on Telescript, I would have wasted lots of time
and effort on a failed product (failed in my eyes, because of its potential)
[lesson: proprietary programming languages fail unless they come embedded
within a killer consumer application]

    Then I got into Safe-Tcl, which is a little more promising, but still
a failure because there was no "killer app" which used it and which would
encourage its incorporation into other servers and clients. HTML would
have failed were it not for Mosaic. I was on the Web when it only had a line
mode browser and it was about as exciting as Gopher.

   I think Sun has taken the right approach with Java. Giving out Alphas
and Betas for free with source code. Encouraging heavy porting, and
incorporating it into a "killer app" (HotJava). They will make money
by licensing and selling tools and environments for Java, but their biggest
success will be that it will become the defacto "enabled content" language.

   Java still lacks what Telescript has (the ability to checkpoint execution
state and migrate execution across servers seamlessly), but what Telescript
has that Java doesn't isn't enough to make people wait for it, or pay
lots of money to be developers for.

   I could be wrong about how successful Java will be, but my confidence
factor is high.

-Ray