Programming Languages (was Re: [rescue] Solaris on a PPC)

[Sheldon T. Hall]

"Patrick Giagnocavo +1.717.201.3366" <patrick at zill.net> wrote ...

> On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 07:07:29PM -0500, Sheldon T. Hall wrote:

> > "Dave McGuire" <mcguire at neurotica.com> writes ...
>
> > > On Thursday, February 6, 2003, at 05:52 PM, Frank Van Damme wrote:
>
> > Sometimes the suits decide.  Either they want to be able to advertise
that
> > it is "written in <foo> for <bar>" or they read something in Business
Week
> > about it.  Why else does an excressence like Sun's HotJava exist?
>
> This is amply demonstrated in the case of ArsDigita.
>
> They were using TCL as a scripting language and AOLserver which is
(despite its name) a pretty rocking multithreaded web server.
>
> They had a profitable business.
>
> Then the suits decided they wanted it, but in Java.
>
> They never shipped a usable Java version, and halted production on
> their TCL version.
>
> Guess what happened?

Looks like they went TU.

I hadn't kept up with it, but I know Philip Greenspun was involved.  In
fact, I thought he was the boss, so I'm a bit surprised that there were
suits to do any deciding at all.  Greenspun doesn't seem like a particularly
suit-friendly kind of guy....

Worse, it looks like their spiritual successor, ADUni.org, is dead, or at
least comatose, too.

-Shel