I didn't just look at Java in 1997. I stepped aside from VFP completely. For all the reasons you raise so delicately. ;-)
As for supercede- I remember it, with the 1960s hippie swirls on the cover, right? ;-) Compilation of java to proper windows executables? Wasn't Allen of MS fame involved in that?
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
