“But as Java progressed, it ran into bumps in the road. It
became the center of a legal battle between Sun and Microsoft.
Programmers faulted certain aspects of the technology, notably the
quality of its development tools. ‘It doesn’t have Visual Basic’s
ease of prototyping,’ Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff told
NewsFactor, citing just one example.“And Java has faced particularly stiff competition in the
Windows desktop world. A common argument among programmers is that
‘if you’re writing for a Windows platform, why not write it in a
Microsoft environment? You’ll have less problems,’ Bates told
NewsFactor.“Java still faces many of these obstacles, leading some to
wonder: Is Java a robust and versatile enough technology to play a
leading role in the future of software…?”