OT: non-standard language features (was Re: OT: case statements in sh)

[Kenneth Brody]

Quoting ryan (Wed, 25 Jan 2006 14:37:51 -0500):

> On Wed, Jan 25, 2006 at 01:59:21PM -0500, Kenneth Brody said:
>
> > A more recent example would be Microsoft's "Java" compiler, which was
> > really not Java, but an MS language that was "mostly Java, but with a
> > whole lot of Windows-specific extensions, which were conveniently not
> > marked as 'Windows only', so that people writing 'Java' programs would
> > really be locking themselves into the Microsoft Windows platform only
> > and not know it until it was too late".
> >
> > Not that MS would put it that way, mind you.  :-)
>
> But they did put it that way secretly. Well it was secretly.
>
> According to a leaked memo obtained by the Department of Justice,
> Microsoft's Thomas Reardon to his colleagues in November 1996:
>
> "We should just quietly grow J++ share and assume that people will
> take more advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are
> building win32-only java apps."

Of course, Microsoft's take on the "we infringed on Sun's 'Java'
trademark, so we can't call our J++ virtual machine 'Java'" story
was "mean old Sun says we can't include a Java runtime anymore
(boo hoo, sniffle)" to explain why XP SP2 no longer includes it.

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