I recall that in the late 90-x, Java was actually more widely used in webpages. In this niche, it was largely displaced by ActionScript (Flash) later. Why did this happen? As I understand, both Java and ActionScript use VM and garbage collection. Why the latter startup time is smaller than the former? I googled for many comparisons between two, but all of comparisons concentrate on syntax, which is of course compiled out and not interesting at all. Even Topcoder seems to want to phase its Arena applet in favor of Flash. I do not understand.