Why did Ajax beat Java in the RIA market?

Bruce Eckel looks at “How And Why AJAX, Not Java,
Became the Favored Technology for RIAs”. He begins with what’s
wrong with Java and the web at large. He then looks at the RIA space,
the alternatives, the challenges and why Java hasn’t managed to capture
the market for client-side RIAs.

He says “In fact, why do we like Ajax?
It’s clearly not because JavaScript is so easy to work
with—JavaScript cross-platform problems are the reason people
have avoided it in the past. Ajax is popular because we know that the
necessary software for the client side is already installed. Someone
had to figure out how to deal with the cross-platform issues for
JavaScript first, but if JRE installation was trivial, everyone might
have just created Java applets. But they didn’t, applets are
not ubiquitous, and everyone got excited about Ajax instead. So Ajax
became the favored technology for RIAs.”

“It’s not impossible to build GUI applications with Java, but
it’s been 10 years and there are still installation hiccups
with applets, Java WebStart, and regular
applications. After 10 years, people don’t trust it anymore.”

He then looks at how Flash
and Flex
could be possible solutions for creating powerful cross-platform UIs.
Read the entire article on JDJ

For a contrary opinion have a look at why Marc Domenig feels that despite the hype around Ajax, Java Swing can
be a much better option
.

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0 thoughts on “Why did Ajax beat Java in the RIA market?

  • February 14, 2007 at 9:59 am
    Permalink

    Mr. Bruce Eckel appears in web ads for Adobe Flex. So the article that declares Flex as a great option for RIA development, is really paid promotion that has been sneaked in as a content article.

  • February 8, 2007 at 10:17 pm
    Permalink

    Many years back there was just as much hype about Applets as there’s about Ajax today. Applets were also being used by all the major sites.

    If Ajax can sustain and not be wiped out by something new in a couple of years only then can we say that Ajax beat Java GUI

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