Everyone had a braindead thread implementation at that time. Even Sun had to fix things in Solaris so that Java would run happily.
With the possible exception of Windows, you can than the Java Hype Cycle if you had a non shitty thread implementation in your operating system in the late 90’s.
NCSA went with Win32s to get threads and 32 bit addressing. I’m not sure what Netscape did, but by skipping Win32s it allowed them to ship on a single floppy for a long time. Which people found to be a feature.
NSCA has special dispensation to redistribute Win32s, so if you ordered a free copy of Mosaic you could get a copy of Win32s on another floppy.
Improbably, because I had no idea which way was up, I did some contract work for Adobe bridging AutoCAD with Curo (a doc mgmt something). Win16 to Win32. Or vice-versa, I can't remember. "Thunking." An apt name. Seems like it shouldn't have even worked.
> thank the Java Hype Cycle if you had a non shitty thread implementation
I'm sure. I helped "Alligator Descartes" with the Magician OpenGL bindings for Java, around the time of Java3D. After much fussing, I managed to reliably get multiple contexts to render in sync. On Windows at least. Thank god for Doug Lea's work. Watching a bunch of cubes spin, each in their own window, was pretty neat for the time.
I watched this "Birth of the Browser" episode. It was a nice stroll down memory lane. Plus I dug a bit more to find corroborating stories. marca's recall of history and arcana is very impressive.
My low esteem for marca's acumen, abilities, and accomplishments was very wrong. Most importantly, his instincts and advocacy wrt HTML, HTTP, etc. was right, whereas I was mosdef wrong. (Repeatedly.)