On 2009-09-30 07:16 -0600 (Wed), John A. De Goes wrote:
The cross-platform features have been extremely important to the success of Java....
Moreover, the importance of cross-platform libraries on the Java platform is evinced by the fact that developers of major native libraries _always_ make their libraries cross-platform....
Hm. It is interesting to note, then, that Ruby, which has worse cross-platform support than Haskell[1], is yet still quite popular, orders of magnitude more so than Haskell. So while that portability may have helped Java, it doesn't seem required to become popular. [1] I've ported a fair amount of both Ruby and Haskell code from Unix to Windows, so I think I have a pretty good handle on the the relative portability of both. cjs -- Curt Sampson <cjs@starling-software.com> +81 90 7737 2974 Functional programming in all senses of the word: http://www.starling-software.com