a case for reconsidering JEP 398: Deprecate the Applet API for Removal

[mark.yagnatinsky at barclays.com]

> Java loads classes lazily, so depending on how the application is coded, it may not an issue at all

I think the usual pattern is

class MyLittleApp extends Applet {
	public static void main(String... args) {
		invokeLater(some runnable that creates the main window);
	}
}

And I think here Java has to load Applet eagerly because Applet might have a static init block.

And yes, I agree that this is not an issue until 2030 or so.
But if I wait until then to speak up, the response will likely be:
"Why didn't you say anything when we were making these decisions?  You had a whole decade."

And yes, writing an agent would work if the application is popular enough.
Lots of things are possible for applications that are popular enough.
But there's a long tail of things that are not popular enough.

In my first email I included as an example some Java code that some professor wrote as a companion to a book on computational geometry in C.
(Yes, the book was about C; the Java code is just "bonus content".)
I expect that once that professor retires, this code will have zero maintainers.

My concern is for this "long tail" of combo desktop apps / java applets that are not popular at all, but still appreciated by their few users.

Thoughts?

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