Yes the initial hype on Java when it came out of Sun was all around desktop use, often but not exclusively in browser. They even tinkered with the idea of writing the browser — even an OS! — in Java. There was literally something called JavaOS. Anyone remember the JavaStation?
Trouble is the computers of 1996, combined with the less optimized JVM of 1996, were really not up to the task. And I would venture the GUI libraries were not there yet either. 24 years later we have very speedy JVMs and much faster computers and networks and toolkits like the one in the article (JavaFX) sound much smoother. Meanwhile Clojure offers concurrency primitives that are making threading much more accessible.
Trouble is the computers of 1996, combined with the less optimized JVM of 1996, were really not up to the task. And I would venture the GUI libraries were not there yet either. 24 years later we have very speedy JVMs and much faster computers and networks and toolkits like the one in the article (JavaFX) sound much smoother. Meanwhile Clojure offers concurrency primitives that are making threading much more accessible.