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A characteristic of a program which can
run on any platform without modification. It may sound simple to
achieve, but it is extremely hard to engineer because of enormous
differences between operating systems and processor and a general
unwillingness by their developers to co-operate. Java, sun Microsystems's
programming language, promised to deliver this Holy Grail of computing and,
maybe, break Microsoft's stranglehold on the pc industry in
the process. But despite much public wishful thinking on Sun's behalf, only
the simplest Java programs have turned out to be truly portable. |
