Its main claim to fame is its ability to write little programs called applets that can be put on a server's Web site, and downloaded and run on the client's machine. This feature, which makes the World Wide Web a dynamic rather than a static environment, has excited a lot of people and generated a great deal of interest in Java. Any decent applet will be large so that downloading it will be time consuming, even on T1 sites. This restriction limits the usefulness of these applets. Microsoft, even though it has licensed Java, has already announced that it will release Visual Basic Scripts as a Web programming language.
Applets are interpretive.
There is talk of a third-party compiler, this implies downloading and then compiling every time. Platform independence leads to features based on the lowest common denominator, such as Java's support for only one mouse button because a Macintosh only has one. The next year should be an interesting one for Java and its competitors. Both IBM and Oracle are jumping on the bandwagon, and many Web sites are already talking about adding Java applets. Long time users of Robelle software will remember the little blue book we gave away at the San Antonio Interex conference in 1982.