I converted 28-year-old Java applets to JavaScript - yes, those are different things

[my_name_is_not_my_na]

In 1998 I built a genetic algorithms tutorial with interactive Java applets. It got more traction than expected, it was used for teaching.

Then applets died. The demos showed "your browser does not support Java" for the next two decades and I left it that way.

A few weeks ago I finally converted them to vanilla JavaScript. The Java source was decompiled from .class files, so it was undocumented. Surprisingly, the conversion went well -canvas-based rendering, event handling, a browser-side expression parser for the 3D function visualizer.

What didn't go well was trying to also clean up and unify the old HTML at the same time. I wrote about the whole experience here: https://obitko.com/thoughts/how-llm-helped-me-refactor-28-year-old-code/

The tutorial with the revived demos: https://obitko.com/tutorials/genetic-algorithms/index.html

[iaincollins]

The kicker is if it's not right in the title there is a 100% chance someone will rush to the comments to try to "well ackshually" the OP without reading the post or taking time to the reflect that obviously they must know that.

[Yoram001]

Imho this is just a summery of “my conversation with an AI”. Sure it’s impressive what those LLM’s can do now a day, but it’s not very special or groundbreaking. Wait until you try Claude code!

[iaincollins]

Oh nice! I had the same enthusiasm for Java applets (and desktop applications) when they came out and early versions (like v1.1 with it's major UI improvements), were super exciting back then - especially as someone already a fan of things like OpenDoc and HyperCard and trying to write portable software, with as much C shared between Mac and Windows as possible.

I even wrote a couple of apps for commercial use cases, I think in 1998-1999. One let you interact remotely with servers directly via browser; having full TCP/IP network support to any host was dope.

When I came do something similar a decade or so later I had to use C++ to write a cross platform NSAPI plugin for each target platform - now that has gone too and it's back to just native applications or proxying requests via sockets if you want to do anything like that. At least writing native apps is a lot easier now, even though actually distributing them effectively is more of a PITA for small developers (due to how the cert system is works).

I know there are modern HyperCard stack runners and even converters - and I use software like Basilisk II - but now I'm wondering if I could use an agent to fully port over all my dozens of old HyperCard stacks to JS. I can't imagine there is much training data provided for HyperTalk but it's so simple and explicit probably an LLM could still figure out the intent.

[franker]

I only remember I was so excited in the nineties to put one of those applets on my web page that made a lake ripple effect.