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> Then why didn't Java do better?

Bad UI frameworks that failed to be usable and/or compatible across systems. Cross compiling is more than producing foreign executables.

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I don't disagree that it came down to UI framework support. It came down to Qt and Wx and neither was a clear winner. The problem was there was nobody with broader ecosystem incentive to make a toolkit that kicked ass on all platforms. It had direct interest but was selling a toolkit and could not make it free/gratis as selling that was their business model. Maybe Firefox with XUL, but they had a vested interest in promoting web sites.

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