Jeremy has been blogging from the OSXCon. Today James Gosling talked about Java.

Gosling said.. Java has been successful everywhere but the desktop. Or at least that's what people hear. It's big on the server and that drowns out the desktop news.

This is something I just don't understand. Why push Java on the desktop? It has not done well in that market and I don't really think it will in the future no matter how many swing libraries materialize. Don't get me wrong, Java is a great language. It's versatile, powerful and manages to keep simplicity despite being a powerhouse of tools.

The main thing about Java is "write once, run anywhere".. which is fantastic, but it turned out to be better for servers than clients. There are a lot of problems with developing Java GUIs, swing not-withstanding. They're slow, quirky and look and feel isn't quite standardized (that's a bigger problem than people might think) . Unless ran in a browser... and who the heck really wants applets besides Yahoo games?

Webstart is a cool project, but since a user needs to have Java already installed on their computer to use it, it's relatively useless in saving Java on the desktop. I just don't think this will happen unless Microsoft starts to distirbute Java as part of the operating system and I don't see that happening anytime soon. Not yet anyway.