Epiphany

I couldn't download the Java Web Services Developer Pack installer at work today because our proxy server blocks all executable content. I wanted only two JAR files from JWSDP [*], so I decided to download the Unix version (a shell script) and see if I could hack it. I had managed to install Cygwin a while back, so I thought I would try to run the shell script from Cygwin and see what happened.

Long story short: after tweaking the script a bit, I managed to install JWSDP and extract the needed JAR files. What made this possible was that the Unix installer is actually a wrapper around the Java version of InstallShield, which will of course run on any Java environment.

This whole experience was an eye-opener for me: the way the operating system was circumvented by the two layers of abstraction -- Cygwin and the Java VM -- brought home the fact that our dependence on the OS is less than what we think it is; it also makes me wonder what might have been if Netscape's air supply had not been cut off and Java had really taken off as an alternative, equally strong platform for application development on the desktop.

[*] The Sun JSF implementation JARs. Actually, I could have gotten them from somewhere else, but that's another story.