“Sun’s chief scientist pulled no punches on a visit to the
University of Washington, despite its proximity to archrival
Microsoft.”
“The glue – the operating system – has gone beyond all reason of
complexity… NT 5 [Windows 2000] is at 30 to 50 million lines of
C/C++ code. It’s like the Star Wars missile defense system. These
kind of programs are just too complex to debug. The tools aren’t up
to the task.”
“Tools aren’t the only problem, Joy continued. “More and more,
the way we develop software determines its reliability. Openness is
the secret here. With NT, there’s no shared [development]
community.”
“Joy also criticized Netscape Communications Corp., noting that
its Mozilla effort hasn’t taken off, either, despite being an open
source project.”
“Naturally, Joy extolled object-centric computing and the ways
that Jini will make such a world a reality.”