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Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

Anyone remember that Java applet in the nineties where there was some 2D wireframe "animal" moving in a rectangle and there was, IIRC, a tiny circle at each joint and you grab it and move it and it'd move the thing around / distort it. It was the first "serious" Java in the Browser I remember. It was all black & white. Maybe some HNer (not an HNer back then obviously) wrote it back in the days?

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Soda Constructor? Yeah, that was a fun one.

Here's a decent JS clone for some nostalgia: http://panoramx.ift.uni.wroc.pl/~maq/lovesoda/0.36beta.html

Huh, I once made a workshop where people used evolutionary algorithms to make a similar shape learn to walk (see gif on top here https://github.com/Matsemann/walkingea ).

There is a paper on two-legged animals learning different methods of walking: https://youtu.be/pgaEE27nsQw (or https://youtu.be/FahK9srJq10 for the slightly better known "music video" version).

Soda Constructor's wikipedia page also links to a 3D applet named "Springs World 3D", I was playing with that one back in the day.

Back in college I had an assignment to build some kind of CRM-like system, and the professor made a point that we used Java applets, because that was the future (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_once,_run_anywhere was all the rage).

I proposed instead learning PHP and using it for that purpose, but was laughed out of the room. Developing this was a PITA and I feel vindicated that applets faded away soon after, and PHP became part of the web-app "standard" (the LAMP acronym was started to be used around then). But I never learned PHP.

On the other hand, Java has established itself as one of the most common server-side languages for building websites.

Yes, it's so interesting how tortuous and serendipitous the evolution of Java has been. It started as a language for embedded devices, then made its way to the interactive web because its bytecode was so portable, and then somehow people figured out it's a good language for the backend because it's managed and thus safer than the alternatives, despite its inherent performance disadvantage. So many unintended extra lives.

Honestly with all the Electron-based desktop apps out there people are still thinking that way. Just with a different language and framework.

I remember when nytimes.com started using java like this, and something like 8 out of 10 failed to function in Firefox on Linux.

I remember! Perhaps that is Soda Constructor:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_Constructor http://maciejmatyka.blogspot.com/2018/02/soda-constructor-re...

The first Java applets that stood out for me were Anfy Team’s. My images looked supercool with a rippling reflection underneath them!

SodaPlay and SodaConstructor

It’s on GitHub now:

https://github.com/SodaLtd/Sodaplay

So many good java games likely lost to time. The falling sand games were my jam back then.

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