These guys obviously never heard of JBoss.

Roy Russo
http://www.loopfuse.com

Seriously! Have you seen Gavin's prince albert?

This isn't going to turn into a listing of all of the great Java professionals tattoos, is it? :P

Seriously! Have you seen Gavin's prince albert?

Yours is an easy mistake to make but what he has is called a 'Herb Alpert'.

C'mon...Finish that thought, preferably without saying anything too disparaging. But what about JBoss?

JBoss was edgy... I remember hiring a fantastic Java developer that was COMPLETELY covered in tattoos (even had a tat on his inner-lip). The engineering team was not "traditional", in that they partied like rockstars (Gavin thinks he's a rockstar, to this day), talked like sailors, and at the same time got sh*t done.

This blog post may be the perception of someone in corporate America, but it is not reality. Those "cool and tattooed" Java developers are out there, they just don't work at places like Oracle or Sun.

Frankly, I'm a "tattooed Java engineer", and I would NEVER consider working at such a place. I have a low tolerance for idiot managers and sitting in meetings all day.

Roy Russo
http://www.loopfuse.com

First I would need to understand why it's important to have people with tattoos using a given programming language.  Is having tattoos supposed to make you cool or something?

It's a strange idea.  Do we also need more people who wear silly hats or guys who wear makeup.  Yeah, tattoos are (semi-) permanent but it's really more of a fashion statement than anything else.  I've had lot of friends with tattoos and I don't have any issue with them unless it's like a swastika or something.  I have a hard time understanding why people want to get them.  I've not felt that my body needed any amendments.  It must just be my inner rasta.

Personally I think the world would be a better place if we thought about programming languages and software as tools instead of lifestyle choices.

Just for the record, I was a badass before I got my tattoos. ;-)

I think the tattoo argument in this post is a metaphor... the implication is that Java needs an injection of edgy, think-out-of-the-box, young-bloods. He's right, he's obvious, but as I said, they're already here.

Roy Russo
http://www.loopfuse.com

Cameron,

You are right on the money about the tattoos and piercings - nowadays who gets them are wannabe frat boys and bitchy beauty queens - not exactly very original, creative or free-thinking people :-).

More seriously though, the trend of gray heads in the Java community is a real concern. I see hardly any young developers excited about Java anymore and I'm not entirely sure what the solution is (like you, I disagree that there are any fundamental barriers to innovation in Java). Java being the enterprise language of choice is obviously good for us that have been around for a bit but there has to be a good balance somewhere. Maybe the problem is that Java really isn't being used for doing cool, edgy stuff anymore rather than it being an issue of the technology itself? Back in my school days we used Java for stuff like robotics and artificial intelligence that definitely grew my own interest in the language. The "cool stuff" these days are probably more cross-disciplinary stuff like computing in earth sciences, the environment, life-sciences, law enforcement, civil defense, education, psychology, particle physics, nano-technology, etc. It was also the case that my college had a good relationship with Sun and often granted internships to do cool stuff with Java (e.g. two of my good friends got Java based internships at Lockheed Martin and NASA). The even bigger problem is that if you look at college campuses these days, the Comp Sci enrollment has really dropped because computing isn't really seen as the hip thing to do and still make a decent amount of money...

Cheers,
Reza

***You are right on the money about the tattoos and piercings...

Finally after over a week in the office, I've got something right! 

Actually, from where I sit, it looks like you had a great first week :-). Keep up the good work :-)

Cheers,
Reza

Reza,

>More seriously though, the trend of gray heads...

I take offense to your statement - did you intentionally exclude the "shiny head" group of people?  And when I mention "shiny head", I mean the group that are "shiny head's" - not by choice...

Looking forward to an explanation :)

dustin.

Dustin,

Now there's a great solution to the problem...why not simply shave our heads and pretend we are all twenty-years-olds again (incidentally the way I plan to defeat that wonderful sign of aging some of us males enjoy so much thanks to daddy dearest) :-). Certainly helps save money on hair-dye and makes us Java guys still look hip compared to the RoR junkies :-). That and a liposuction/face-lift/tummy tuck and we are all good to go on making Java last another few decades!!

Cheers,
Reza

I would have to admit that this whole thread is quite surreal to me.  Never in my earlier days of Java did I ever think that Java would date me.  I always thought that it was my Fortran66/77, Pascal, Cobol, Snobol and various assembly knowledge that would date me...

Up until now, I thought that I was still hip knowing Java...

Oh well...

Dustin

I for one don't have time to worry about java being cool, looking cool or trying to be cool. I'm too busy programming and doing stuff with Java. all of this focus on "cool" is just silly. Young kids don't like to do what their parents do, so young kids choosing one language over another has nothing to do with usefulness or getting the job done. It's simply rebellion for the sake of not being like one's parents. Once they mature and grow up, they'll realize how stupid it is. I sure as heck went through that and realized older people are full of experience and insight. It's best to learn from people older, because they've probably been through it. That probably sounds "totally uncool", but I'd rather focus on writing good code than "looking cool and being useless".

"Java for Chavs"
Bring it on!