January 10, 2007: With the release of the January CTP of Orcas, Microsoft is announcing two important changes to the Visual J# offering.
To meet customer demand for 64-bit runtime support, we are planning to release an upgrade to the Visual J# redistributable earlier than previously communicated called, Visual J# 2.0 Redistributable Second Edition.
Since customers have told us that the existing J# feature set largely meets their needs and usage of J# is declining, Microsoft is retiring the Visual J# product and Java Language Conversion Assistant tool to better allocate resources for other customer requirements. The J# language and JLCA tool will not be available in future versions of Visual Studio.
They are adding 64-bit support for the runtime at the same time as they are removing the language from Visual Studio. Well, I’m certain that it makes sense to somebody.
J# was Microsoft’s half-hearted attempt to port JavaScript to .Net. It wasn’t as flexible as JavaScript nor as fast as C# – in other words, it never really had a reason to exist.
And now it joins VB6 in Microsoft’s growing list of abandoned languages.
There are popularity cycles in computer programming languages just as there are in womens’ clothing styles or in popular music.
But some things endure. Programmers keep “rediscovering” Smalltalk and Lisp in the same way that generations of music aficionados keep “rediscovering” Beethoven and Mozart.
Real quality is timeless.
