Sam's Rant: Operating Systems...Why?

We may be entering an age where the operating system that you use will not limit your selection of applications. Given a Java VM and the appropiate interfaces to the hardware layer (no need for peer objects) we find a generic development environment.

What does this mean for the average user? No more after Christmas returns of incompatible software. Instead of marking the package "Blankety-Blank Compatible!" it will merely read "For use with your Computer".

What about the developer? Here lies the real advantage. Now you can write software once, no more porting, no more reengineering for the latest and greatest operating system. Once all the operating sytem level hooks have been abstracted away into a Java Bean or, God forbid, an ActiveX component, developers will be unencumbered by the details of the infrastructure. This vision is what drives programmers, even those who write code for the most popular operating system, to learn Java.

IS departments will be the biggest market for custom operating systems. No longer will the IS department make their operating system choice based on user bias. There will be operating systems specifically for huge centrally administered networks. Applications will appear on desktops at the cliche flip of a switch. New applications will be installed without headaches. Monitoring computer resource usage will be trivial. Usage of a computer without proper access will be impossible. Remote users? No problem. The interface will be identical. Groupware? What software won't be groupware? When an application and a user are just objects in an object store barriers to effective management of worldwide networks will become an art not an exercise in crisis management.

What does this mean in the near-term? It means there will be a standards war unequalled in the history of computing. The winners of this war will decide the fate of computing for all. The process of selecting the standards to embrace is proceeding at an unprecedented pace. Netscape, Sun, and Microsoft along with hundreds of other software development houses and individuals are competing for this prize. What other time in computing history have we seen the sort of one-up-man-ship that you can observe on the Net today. New versions are released in beta form months before they are ready. If your company ships what used to be known as vaporware your company will soon be vapor. Even if you are one of the big contenders. It is this realization by Microsoft that has put us in this position today. Had Billy not seen the writing on the wall he would still be rich but he would also be a legacy.

Sam Pullara
spullara@suba.com

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