IT is rare indeed for a computer programming language to be a big story on television or in the popular press, but that is exactly what Sun Microsystem's new language Java has done.
Perhaps the biggest news about this is that it is being seen as the one thing that may put a dent in the giant software machinery of Microsoft.
Rumours about the big blow this would mean for Microsoft were rife at a recent JavaOne conference held in San Francisco.
Most of the people attending were programmers and developers who nearly all had some kind of grudge against Microsoft so their antagonism was understandable.
Nevertheless, the question has popped up: should Microsoft be worried about Java and its ubiquitous conquest of the Internet? For the past 15 years Microsoft has dominated the desktop PC software business.
For the past 10 years, Microsoft has had little competition.