Charles Miller discusses the perceived difference between the Java community as a whole, compared to some other communities. He sums it up with: "I think, to some extent, Java programmers suffer a siege mentality." If this is true, why is Java different?

Charles has an idea on why:

"I think that’s what you get when your language was designed as a compromise between competing points of view, rather than striking out on its own path."

There certainly is passion on TheServerSide.com, which is often a good thing... but has definitely gotten out of hand in the past. Hopefully in the future we can keep the passion and love for technology, and minimize on the name calling a little? :)

Read Charles Miller in The Java Siege Mentality

<bow>

Sound like a job for HomeLand Security!

Uncontrolled public forums on the Internet became useless the day everyone could have Internet access easily (about 10 years ago). Check the history of Usenet.

Use a moderated forum. Slashdot is a good example how to keep the balance between the different valuable views and the 95% noise. For the last 3 or 4 years, Slashdot has actually been readable at the highest filter level (if you had too much time, that is).

This system also encourages well researched and well written posts. Right now, I'd compare Slashdot at the default filter with the pain that is TSS. In other words, as much fun as sticking a pocket knife into your thigh to show everyone that you are a tough guy.

The sad state of the Java community (what community? JavaRanch? JavaLobby? the sad blog about how idiotic this all is? thats the best we have?) is shocking if you take a step back, and I wanted to write a blog entry about that for weeks, if not months.

If TSS wants to be the place where people discuss things and where each thread is worth to be bookmarked for future reference, it has to have some moderation system. This is in fact a social problem that can only be managed with a technical solutions, as experience in other communities showed.

I totally agree with you Christian.

I used to invest a fair bit of time and effort researching and posting on this forum, but became disenchanted because these posts would almost always be drowned out by a sea of ill-informed or noisy posts.

What would you suggest as a solution? Do you think a simple system of allowing people to rate posters and/or posts, and then filtering, would be sufficient?

I wonder whether some sort of "trust network" (so that higher-rated posters' ratings of others would carry proportionally more weight than lower-rated or un-rated posters) might be required to prevent abuse of the system?

Lawrie

Some kind of trust network would certainly be good, as it relieves the "real" moderators from checking every minute. These moderators should certainly be TSS staff, at least at the start. I'd say: Don't make anything up ad-hoc, go with something that already works. Just copy the Slashdot system. If it doesn't work for TSS (and I don't see why), make slight adjustments until it works.

A better thread view would also be very nice. Right now, I ignore the thread order and just hit "Reply" without thinking about it much. It looks like I'm not alone with that; better visible sub-threads (again, like Slashdot) would probably end in a real conclusion in a sub-thread, not end in name-calling.

I hate Slashdot as much as everyone, but they have some experience with web-based discussion forums (which btw is like buying groceries with a 10 wheel truck) and did everything wrong at least once already.

Be careful not to change a successful product. "If it is not broke not fix it" TSS is the only forum for experienced consultants that works - I know of know others. I also love that I don't have to open a window every time to read a post. Have you tried to read Slashdot at -1? Don't do it, you will regret. Slashdot is for kids.

I like the citation:
"We’re surrounded on all sides, you see. To C programmers, we’re children who can’t handle real complexity. To Smalltalkers and Lispers, we’re misguided souls groping towards a better way, but trapped in the wicked grasp of Sun’s marketing. To Perl and PHP nerds, we’re too busy over-complicating things to ever get anything done. To Ruby and Python hackers, we’re already dinosaurs. And to everyone, we’re apparently the COBOL of the 21st Century."

A useful reminder. Remember that the J2EE crowd keep a pretty high profile! :-)

As to moderation what is wrong with "Mark as noicy"?

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

> "We’re surrounded on all sides, you see. To C programmers, we’re children who can’t handle real complexity. To Smalltalkers and Lispers, we’re misguided souls groping towards a better way, but trapped in the wicked grasp of Sun’s marketing. To Perl and PHP nerds, we’re too busy over-complicating things to ever get anything done. To Ruby and Python hackers, we’re already dinosaurs. And to everyone, we’re apparently the COBOL of the 21st Century."

I think in general Java suffers (and prospers) from trying to be a "one-size-fits-all" language. You can write every part of your system in Java, but there's almost always another language out there that will allow you to write a given portion of it in less time or with higher performance - potentially both.

So how important is it to have an entire system written in one language?

I personally tend to think every self-respecting programmer should know a dozen programming languages, so using three or four on a project shouldn't cause anyone to skip a beat. But in reality I know there are plenty of one trick ponies in town. That makes a one-language system a lot more attractive.

In my experience, the 'siege' mentality comes from the fact that Java has non-commercial roots, and has been attacked -- in at least one case illegally -- by 'buggy-whip' type existing industry devotees.

You see the same mentality in the Linux camp.

Java is under siege. There's a lot of money going into attacking it's success. And a lot of FUD.

Huh? When did Sun become a not-for-profit?

When did Sun become a not-for-profit?

I was referring to the fact that the development platform is not a product Sun sells commercially.

And believe me, that changes everything.

Java developers remind me of

Mac Developers fearing Windows developers 10-15 years back.

Now the same (ex Mac) Java developers showing their trait.

Competition is good. Welcome back Microsoft.

Occasionally I meet Java programmers that says that there are no object-relation mapping for .NET (ObjectSpaces not 1.0 yet).

.Net Persistence
AtomsFramework
BBADataObjects
DADO Solution
Data Tier Modeler for .NET
DataObjects.NET
Entity Broker
eXpress Persistent Objects
FastObjects .NET
Grove
LLBLGen
Neo
Nolics.net
Norpheme
ObjectPersistor.NET tool
ObjectSpark
Objectz
OJB.NET
OO-Data Access
OPF.Net
ORM.NET
POTIS
Pragmatier
RapTier
Sisyphus Persistence Framework
TierDeveloper
WilsonORMapper

;)

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

C++ and .NET developers remind me of

Mac Developers fearing Windows developers 10-15 years back.

Now the same C++ and .NET developers showing their trait.

Competition is good.

Shoe's on the other foot.

Actually it was the Java community pretensions of "über-computer scientists" who first pissed me of, an insult to all educated and intelligent people of the world possessed with any reason or logic or common sense.

Regards
Rolf Tollerud
(Irresponsible hobbyist - Microsoft hacker)

Rolf: Actually it was the Java community pretensions of "über-computer scientists" who first pissed me of, an insult to all educated and intelligent people of the world possessed with any reason or logic or common sense.

Sometimes your perceptions are based as much on your own self-doubt as on the words and actions of others. In other words, your own feelings of inadequacy have caused you to take offence where none was intended.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy (Not a computer scientist)
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Clustered JCache for Grid Computing!

I could be angry at you and retaliate your usual personal attacks, don't think for a second I do not have ample material! But for the first I have used up my (hominen) ration in the TSS-NET for several months and for the second it is hard for me to be angry when I heard about the success of Eclipse Foundation's first annual conference. 634 members! That's means probably 1200 - 1500 next year.. Do you think Javaone will get as many? I will give you a good advice which you probably don't want but I give it to you anyway, better to bring along as many friends as possible or you run the risk of being all alone at the conference :-).

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

Rolf: it is hard for me to be angry when I heard about the success of Eclipse Foundation's first annual conference. 634 members! That's means probably 1200 - 1500 next year.. Do you think Javaone will get as many?

I'm starting to think that you're growing a sense of humor .. I'm hoping JavaOne draws more than that, since we've already spent a lot of money on it.

OTOH, if it's another SunONE event (instead of JavaOne) then it will be hard to convince more than a thousand people to be there ... might as well go other boring one-vendor shows like the PDC :-p

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Clustered JCache for Grid Computing!

Cameron: OTOH, if it's another SunONE event (instead of JavaOne) then it will be hard to convince more than a thousand people to be there ...

Well I can agree with that, one-vendor shows not as interesting. But, BTW, there were 7000 "fortunati partecipanti" at the PDC 2003..I wonder how many it will be next year?

Other highlights from EclipseCon,

> One of the most significant features of Eclipse 3.0 is the support for the Rich Client.."

> In the Magic Kingdom of Eclipse, not all the amusements are equal. Some of the tracks were much more densely occupied than others, including the rich interface sessions, which were "standing room only"

How many do you think will have an overgrown Big J2EE server as a "Server for Rich Clients" instead of a lean and mean Web Service?

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

http://www.ftponline.com/reports/pdc/2003/kiely/

Rolf, while you are at it, could you do something for us, please: get a life.

We don't need this kind of crap you keep posting here. Unless you are really getting some sense of humour, as this announcement has some good jokes in it...

Are you saying I, moi! doesn't have a sense of humor?

you stink kid... check your nappies!!!

Well, in fact, to defend MS in a Java Forum, either you are dumb, or you have a crippled sense of humour. Pick one.

Oops, I forgot you MS people aren't used to make choices for yourself. Sorry! ;)

http://www.theserverside.net/discussions/thread.aspx?thread_id=23310

<trolf>Microsoft hacker</trolf>

quite funny!!!!

>
> I was referring to the fact that the development platform is not a product Sun sells commercially.
>
> And believe me, that changes everything.

.NET Framework is not sold commercially either. Did it changed everything also? ;-)

.NET Framework is not sold commercially either.

.NET is almost more a marketing concept than a development environment.

It's a product designed to sell Windows.

Don't get me wrong, it's the best "Windows-only" environment ever, by far. But the marketing focus is clear -- Java threatens the Windows monopoly, MS tries to turn Java into a Windows-only language, the courts order MS to stop it, MS comes out with a Windows-only copy of Java (and in fact just about every language they could manage).

The entire focus of .NET is to have as many languages as possible run on Windows. .NET's focus is to benefit Windows, not give developers what they really want and need.

Without MS's Windows profits backing, marketing, etc, .NET wouldn't stand a chance. .NET could never go the route Java went, it wouldn't make it. And it still remains to be seen which way will win.

Currently, Java dominates the space. .NET is gaining -- there's a ton of cash being poured into marketing. Not to mention the FUD war . . .

I admire the fact the so much of Java force today is based on Open Source movement. But maybe one thing that is still holding OS growth back is the fact that some of the faces behind those products don't behave profissionally, when under pressure. Just imagine Bill Gates himself shouting out 4 letter words at a forum when challenged and you will get what I mean. This boils down to: part of a product's credibility is formed by their own developers credibility. Someone could be led to think that they show the same level of profissionalism when CODING too. So in the end image is important, no matter how good you are technically. I wished I was wrong, but this is _generally_ true in business: when you are applying for a job, you show up wearing your best suit, not you soccer team t-shirt.

Maybe it's time for some people behind those great opensource software (and some commercial ones too, as I have seen in the past) to rethink their public attitude, since it will surely affect their customers opinion. This doesn't mean people should accept mud in their face and stay put, just that we shouldn't go down to the mud thrower's level, instead just give an honest, direct and polite response. I am sure the mud thrower will loose others respect and be ashamed of his acts, instead of adding more mud to the fight.

Focus more on the technical side of things, and try to keep the emotional and marketing side hidden (this is a tech site anyway), despite all the love we have for the things we create. A monkey baby will be ugly, no matter what its mother thinks of it... :)

PS: and yes, I too vote for being able to see the each thread "indented", with the replies following the original message (not just on the header of the thread) so the answers wouldn't be lost in the middle of the garbage. This will help keeping discussions focused.

Regards,
Henrique Steckelberg

> Did it changed everything also? ;-)

I don't think it helps as much in the Microsoft work. Plus last I checked, .NET was NOT open source. I've actually learned quite a bit going through the JDK source. Anyway...

I have a tendency to fall into the "siege" mindset too, and here's why. There's demand for java, so I follow it as a profession. There community and open source and muti-platform options are awesome. However when something like .NET comes along and developers can be 50% more productive for 80% of what's done, so long as you're on a Microsoft platform, then I get pissed. When PHP / Python guys tell me how fast they whip up base systems, I get pissed. When I think back to Lotus Domino and remember building DB driven web prototypes in 4 hours, I get pissed.

Why am I pissed at? The list is long. SUN when they left out a bunch of stuff in the JDK, kludged up the JDK in the streaming and collections area. Plus they opt not to use other open source code for collections and logging, and for mismanaging Java in general. How about classpath and package version conflicts that spin off a new version of DLL hell? Where is class metadata like in .NET? Xdoclet or any meta tags in the java doc? Screw that. I'm not adding 50% to my projet timeline because I can't find a freak'in tool. JSF is the new cool technology? What the hell? This is a catch up to .NET, and only the post-back markup and management portion. How long before we get an equivalent IDE to VisualStudio (the web page builder I mean)?

I'm pissed at SUN, IBM, Borland, and Intellij (to a less degree) for delivering a tool that meets *MY* needs. Netbeans & SUN?s <what ever the new name is today> IDEs just suck from a UI usability standpoint, but at least Netbeans is free. IBM?s WSAD is freak?in hard to learn, and they even offer a 1 week training class on JUST the IDE. Plus there?s no JBoss EJB descriptor support. Actually Websphere and Weblogic are the only two. Pretty flaky for a $4200 / seat package. JBuilder has an awesome EJB builder, when it works. It looks like the JBoss stuff for JBuilderX is not quite right, but close. However the editor, refactoring, and other UI tools are just confusing and almost useless. I still cannot figure out how to delete a package as right clicking only allows for deletion of a file, and there?s nothing about package delete in the doc. IDEA gets a ding for not being able to build server CMP descriptors at all (if this is wrong, please tell me).

Let?s see, who else? Struts & Tiles. While struts does work well for the purpose, and tiles is pretty bad-ass, the problem is the whole thing is just plopped into stagnation. MVC was cool for about 2 months, now what? Coding pages by hand with beans and tags is just insane. Talk about a time burner. It?s enough to send me back to scriptlets or a worse heresy of putting HTML in some component classes of my own. I?m also pissed a people like TSS, JavaWorld, JDJ, and other for not giving a look to SOFIA. It?s vastly superior to both Struts and .NET post-back, even if it still needs a templating feature. Where?s the press on other good and rocking MVC systems like this one?

Now the web services stuff has to take the freak?in cake. I could almost sit down in .NET / VisualStudio and figure out web services in a day. But in java, it takes more than a day to figure out which package I want to use. What the hell? Is this efficient?

I?m also pissed at Jakarta with their 47 clicks to get a download web site navigation. Plus the doc & examples for projects like Cocoon were horrible in the past. I tried to glaze what it was, and still couldn?t get a good idea of how all the pipelining would work. Just a paragraph with a GOOD picture would work. I?m pissed at Xerces for not having an XmlReader.parse(?c:
myfile.xml?);.

Will all the stuff above, and a long list of others that I don?t feel like re-hashing, it really sucks when I know there?s a better way. It also really sucks when other platforms are more productive, like .NET, and I know the only reason people aren?t switching is because MS is behind it, and it only runs on windowz (for now).

So yea? we get VERY defensive. I?ve put in thousands of hours in to java study and practice. I don?t want to Java go the COBOL road just to be shelved years from now. I want my JSF last year, not sometime later this year. I want my method meta tagging. I want an IDE that works with the rest of the world and doesn?t have a UI designed by a monkey. I want a lot, and I?m willing to give back in terms of open source myself too. But no one person can save java?

Well I hate to rip a new one to all the stuff I hold dear, so I?ll give kudos to SOFIA, Xerces/Xalan, Intellij IDEA, Ensemble Glider, most of WSAD, some of JBuilder, all of Electric XML & GLUE, and for the most part to TSS. We just need more of the best.

Feel free to scream at me here or at leifashley at yahoo dot com. All comments are welcome, and I hope they help build a better Java world for us all.

Damn! I'm also pissed some more at TSS for not automatically escaping my previously posted comment! All my contractions are hosed. :P

Go to jakarta.apache.org. Click on Downloads->Binaries (or Downloads->Source Code) on the left. One click, that's it. And you can bookmark that downloads page if one click is too many. I wonder where 47 came from. Anyways, have a good weekend ;)

Hi all,

Back in my Smalltalk days, I felt under siege too, maybe even more !

My point of view is that we love Java, like I loved Smalltalk. When you have pleasure working, you get addicted, you fall in love. I still remember Smalltalk as an old lover... You'll often hear or read "as an ex Smalltalker"...

Someday, Java will leave room to another technology, hopefully a great one, hopefully not Web Services written in Basic :-)... Then we'll start hearing or reading "as an ex Java guy"...

Java had to cross many obstacles to become Java as we know it today. I left Smalltalk to Java 6 years ago (or is it 7??). Back then, I felt under siege because of C++/VB/Access/Microsoft guys. How could it be different today with .Net/Microsoft ?

I really wonder if late adopters of Java can feel the same as pionnering java guys. My first enterprise app relied on early access servlets, early access jdbc, etc... I had to fight in the company I was working for : an MS shop. Java was not credible, there would be no market for it, it was slow, it was a mess, it was not commercial, nobody would adopt it... Well, they proved wrong ! partly because of me, among many others, who fell in love, and fought to push Java where it is today.

My first critical Java app was a realtime financial indices calculator, publishing indices to the London LIFFE exchange. You can call it critical... and it ran with JDK 1.1.x. This is the kind of applications which, back then, made the followers adopt java.

So let me now thank each and every early Java adopter ! We're here now thanks to you ! But we're still under a siege, don't let you lover go !

Get up, stand up, don't give up the fight !
Chris