bitsifter
friday, august 15 
[sift this]   The Java DeathWatch continued this week with the arrival of Frag Island, a Java based first person shooter style game.  It�s simple to play, just point Netscape Communicator to the page and, after a few minutes of downloading images and building maps, you�ll have a 100% Java based game with some stunningly rendered graphics.  Granted, it�s an early version of the game.  There are no creatures running around to shoot or other players to gib� actually, there is no real objective in the game at all.   Mostly, it appears to exist merely to prove that it can exist.

The Company was a buzz about Frag Island today.  Being keen on the idea that Java will succeed fuels the fire for marketing types when "proof in the pudding" Java applications:

See what Java can do?  Yes, I do.

Isn�t it amazing?  Not really.  Consider this.  Frag Island is based on Quake. -- a game which runs full screen, blazingly fast, and with 15 other players on a network on the Bitsifter 200Mhz Pentium Pro.  Frag Island is the end result of some serious engineering by some hard working developers, but Java simply isn�t up to the task.

But it�s cross platform.   Sure, Frag Island will run on any browser that has a Java virtual machine, but let�s dig a little deeper in the Frag Island site � take a look at the Platform page which describes how the application runs on a variety of hardware.

These results aren�t surprising.   The Windows monopoly forces Netscape to design the fastest and most reliable Java implementations for PCs, but what about Java�s cross platform promise?  If one platform is head and shoulders above the rest� if one platform represents 85% of the market�  why wouldn�t developers just write their programs for Windows and reap the performance benefits?

Fortunately for Netscape, large corporations have been buying into a lot of the Java promises.  These enterprises are full of a wide array of hardware and the idea that one language can provide applications for most of the desktops has them investing millions.  Better yet, they�re not that picky about performance as long as the solutions works.

These companies could learn a lesson from history.  Back in the early 80�s the University of California at San Diego had a language called the p-System.  The idea behind the language should sound familiar.  A developer would write a program for a �pseudo-machine� that existing only in memory and ran identically on different platforms.

Problem with the p-System and the reason why the early developers like Context MBA never saw their spreadsheet sell was the p-System was slow.   Compared to what?  Compared to Mitch Kapor�s lightning fast 1-2-3 spreadsheet written entirely in assembly language.

Today we have vastly more megahertz at our disposal than the PC XT that ran 1-2-3.  It�s easy to think these new processors will make Java shine, but I see no compelling reasons that native code will ever be slower.

[rant]   Access to the bleeding edge is costly.  It involves educating yourself in ideas that may make no sense in a matter of months.  Still, individuals are driven to the brink of technology simply because they want to know that they�re ahead of the game.   Problem is, there is whole lot of us.

Case in point: I�ve spent much of the day dealing with a "new" language called Perl.  Now, I�m well aware of the fact Perl is up to version 5.0 and much of the geek community is aware of it�s existence, but indulge me, I had an epiphany and I want to share.

So, back to Perl.  Today�s exercise involved writing simple programs and I was stuck.  It was one of those �find any Perl programmer in the building and he�ll answer this in 5 seconds� type questions that drive me nuts.   Simple configuration issue.  So simple that a Perl reference manual wouldn�t lower itself to solving my problem.   Pure frustration.

It�s at this point that anyone trying to solve a problem thinks, �Dammit, how am I going to solve this?  No one is around to help since it�s Sunday.  Looks like I�m screwed.�  This is your ego talking, it�s telling you that you are unique in the fact that you�ve faced this problem.  It�s frustrating, but it makes you feel important.

Fact is, I guarantee that no matter how sophisticated your problem may be someone else in the world has faced it.  Even better, they�ve probably asked someone about.  At best, if the problem is technological in nature, they�ve asked their question over the Internet and, I bet, someone recorded it.

I had to believe in this fact when I went to DejaNews to figure out if anyone else had experienced my difficulty.   After a few brief queries to the database, I found roughly 50 response to the exact problem I was experiencing.  With that solved, I dove into my Perl pool of programming and continued my self-education happily.

Everyone has heard the collective knowledge in the Web is virtually unlimited.  I�m fond of telling of telling folks to �look it up on the Web� no matter what the question may be.  Still, the impact of this knowledge base has yet to infiltrate our lives in a way that we take it for granted that our shared experiences can make our lives easier.