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Java: Dead Like COBOL, Not Like Elvis?
In an interview with idevnews.com, author Bruce Tate says Java/J2EE is facing dramatic change, and could be "dead like COBOL, not like Elvis." But, Tate also says there is much hope, mostly coming from influences from open source projects and other languages - and he adds that the JCP is ineffective.IDN: How did you come to look outside the traditional Java community for technologies and ideas that could benefit the developer?
Tate: The motivation for me came from an experience I had. My career to that point had been completely dedicated to Java, with years of working in [corporate IT], and I even have had three Java One best sellers on Java. I was working on a project to build a web front end onto a backend with a complex data model. In Java, it was just taking too long. I had been working on the project for four months, and I still wasn’t finished.
I started saying to myself, 'This [project] should not be taking this long.' So, I asked some other developers I knew. Dave Thomas told me about Ruby on Rails, and it sounded OK but I just thought the project I was working on would crush it. But, I found out, Ruby on Rails worked out really well. Bruce then goes on to say that he modeled the database in two days with Ruby on Rails, with a partner finishing the application in four nights. This begs the question of what takes longest when working on projects? When you are working on a complex data model in Java, is the data model complexity where the time is spent?IDN: How did you come to that point of view, after being a Java developer for so long?
Tate: First, I had to admit that not all answers are coming out of only the traditional Java community. I had just gotten in the frame of mind that Java is THE strong, rich source of new technologies. But, when a practical project need forced me to look outside Java, I found very interesting things happening. Has this truly been the case? What makes up the 'traditional Java community?' Is Spring a result of that community? After all, many (including Bruce Tate) look to Spring as being an example of how open source, community development can make leaps in terms of implementation simplicity and speed; are the ideas encompassed in Spring "non-traditional Java?"
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Message #201032
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The many problems with this
I have noticed that Java developers seem to have this impression that all other languages are dead and no one uses them. This is simply not true. "Dead like COBOL" I would waiger that there are more lines of active COBOL code in the world today than Java. Also, if COBOL is dead, then it had a good 4 decade run. I hope Java has the same.
Useless we can actuall look at what he did in Java and what was done in Ruby, we shouldn't conclude that he is correct. Just because he wrote some books, doesn't make him an expert. 4 months Java = 2 days Ruby?
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Message #201035
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RoR vs Java Again???
Ruby on Rails really has a chance to make a dent in many of the web UI/database problems that Java was designed to solve.
Come on people, this is not a valid comparison, RoR does not compete with JEE, I like to see how they do an complex application with an DB with 100+ tables with ActiveRecord, you cannot base your application 100% on the DB design, it is a poor design, the DB and business rules need to be separated. RoR IMHO does not work for legacy DBs and RoRis JUST for smaller projects, TSS need to stop posting articles that make wrong comparisons...
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Message #201037
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Dead like PL/1?
Fact:
1.Upcoming JSE 6 does not include GroupLayout (Netbeans Matise layout)
2.Upcoming JEE 5 does not include Portlets.
End of story.
Not even fair to mention what other features other tech stack DO include now relative. Clients and Developers are being chased away from where I see.
.V
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Message #201038
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Ruby is great, but...
Before I actualy looked into Ruby (I haven't really worked with RoR much, other than read a few article and tried a simple sample app), I didn't give it any credit. Well, that has changed, Ruby is truly a beautiful language, but...
Ruby does not and I doubt ever will, have the commercial support and standards committee like Java. These are the most important factors for enterprise technologies. If you're an independent consultant and are writting an app for a small/midsize client (who doesn't have a clue), they'll let you write it in anything to save the bucks. In that scenerio, if you love Ruby (RoR), it might be a good choice.
In most enterprise application cases, there is more to writting an app than the beauty of the language.
The other day, I was trying to make a case to make a client of mine use RoR, so that I can learn it and they can save some development time associated costs (so I've been hearing:-). I was done in about 2 minutes, after I couldn't come up with a viable enterprise quality/grade deployment platform for RoR. Even in the RoR book, they describe multiple deployment scenerios, lighttpd with FastCGI, apache with mod_ruby or fastCGI where the only two recommended for production. The first is said to be unstable sometimes (these words are directly from the book), and the second is no longer actively supported/developed. So how comfortable would a company feel in deploying their app in an unstable and/or unsupported environment. So until Ruby has a viable platform, commercial and/or open source, which has a lot of traction, money behind it, etc..., it's a huge risk for any corporation to take on.
For some reason, Ruby folks are not jumping on building a quality server platform, as say mod_perl/Apache, and even Python enjoys. I mean, what good is RoR without anywhere to deploy it?
Ilya
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Message #201039
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Dead like PL/1?
Fact:1.Upcoming JSE 6 does not include GroupLayout (Netbeans Matise layout)2.Upcoming JEE 5 does not include Portlets.End of story. Not even fair to mention what other features other tech stack DO include now relative. Clients and Developers are being chased away from where I see..V
What in the world are you talking about? This is why clients are being chased away? Because of GroupLayout and lack of JEE support for portlets? Ruby or other languages have that support? Even if the portlets are not going to be included in the JEE 5 support, I'm sure there will be great quality implementations out there you can use.
Ilya
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Message #201040
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Yes, but..
If I have to learn another language, wont I find myself getting confused when I switch back and forth between languages?
Wont I need another set of tools and scripts for compiling/deploying?
Wont I lose the ability to re-use my favorite libraries - i.e; DOM4J, Spring, Log4j, Hibernate, JUnit, etc..?
For a language that is not yet mainstream, wont it be harder to "google" for answers to your technical questions, and find documentation and a community?
Definately, we need to evolve and develop new languages as time goes by. But there has to be something BIG to get me to leave my comfort zone and community. From C++ to Java, it was the OS independence. I dont see it yet, with ROR.
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Message #201042
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Java: Dead Like COBOL, Not Like Elvis?
Is Tate living in a cocoon. He says in the article "Well, look at it from a historical context. The problem Java grew up around solving was slapping a web UI around legacy stuff, mostly relational databases. The thinking was, and still is: ‘If you can solve that web-database problem very quickly, most of the time you will be important." Well, I've been doing Java and and JEE for a number of years in the enterprise space and "slapping a web UI" has rarely if ever been the focus for our use of Java. In Java's early days it wasn't even the web. People in corporations kept trying to write fat clients with Java. They thought they had a better more portable VB. Attempts to use it on the web beyond applets came later. The people who did think that Java was primarily for solving UI problems where the weenies and kids - the same types who think the world's important problems could/should be solved by spinning widgets in VB.
As years have gone by and JEE has matured, we are increasingly using it to replace the backend systems and not just integrate with them. Tate says that in the article, but his tone implies that he thinks that sort of work is somehow less important. Well Bruce, its the sort of computing that runs the world. The UI's are just the icing. Amazon's one-click web interface wouldn't be very important if they couldn't obtain the product, ship it to you and collect the money. That's not done by a web UI.
So for everyone like Bruce who thinks its all about the UI - please go chase after the next big UI toy and leave the real work to the adults.
All that being said, I agree with a number of Tate's points and there is a lot to criticize about the JCP and the role of vendors in gunking up the platform and the ridiculous proliferation of "frameworks" and "standards". However, all this activity is actually proof that Java is not dead "like COBOL". The COBOL world has not experience that much diversity and change in decades, if ever.
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Message #201043
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Bruce does anything to sell his books
I don't buy this story for several reasons.
You cannot tell me that an experienced team of two Java programmers spend 4 months working on an application, getting the job not done and then doing a rewrite in less than a week.
Either the numbers don't add up, Bruce is not telling the whole story or the experience of those developers was not so brilliant after all.
Sure, RoR is great, and I can also crank out a complex data model in minimal time. But really, with Hibernate 3.1 I can do it in the same time. In RoR I edit SQL code and create mostly empty model classes and with Hibernate I just write model classes with some annotations added.
Maybe Bruce spend 4 months building this app in a classic J2EE/1.3 environment; Struts, Entity Beans, etc. Well, we all already knew that it is pretty difficult to be agile with that combination.
So, invitation to Bruce: why not give us fill disclosure about what went really wrong in the original project?
S.
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Message #201044
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Open Source
Ruby on Rails really has a chance to make a dent in many of the web UI/database problems that Java was designed to solve. Come on people, this is not a valid comparison, RoR does not compete with JEE,..
I don't think this was the main thrust of Bruce's interview. I think the point he was making is how should we go about innovating.
He makes the point that the open source model is a lot better at doing this. I agree.
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Message #201045
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Yes, but..
If I have to learn another language, wont I find myself getting confused when I switch back and forth between languages?Wont I need another set of tools and scripts for compiling/deploying?Wont I lose the ability to re-use my favorite libraries - i.e; DOM4J, Spring, Log4j, Hibernate, JUnit, etc..?For a language that is not yet mainstream, wont it be harder to "google" for answers to your technical questions, and find documentation and a community?Definately, we need to evolve and develop new languages as time goes by. But there has to be something BIG to get me to leave my comfort zone and community. From C++ to Java, it was the OS independence. I dont see it yet, with ROR.
I miss a lot of things when I work in RoR. Simple example, I needed an app to generate secure PayPal buttons. In Java this is about 40 lines of code that uses the JCE APIs. In Ruby there is nothing similar so you are simply not able to do this. End of story. I ended up with writing a simple web service in Java to do the crypto work so that the Ruby app can still have this functionality. Works ok, but it is not ideal.
Many other things. I really miss JMS in the Ruby world. I miss the well defined APIs of the standard Java runtime. I miss the quality documentation. The many more resources available in books and online. I miss simple things like an IoC container, a choice of web servers, Jakarta Commons. I miss things like JMX to monitor my app, etc.
I've asked people on for example Ruby newsgroups and in chatrooms about the above things and I usually get the same reaction as from the Python people: "you don't think in a Ruby way". Personally I think these people simply don't know any better. Java is a very rich platform with many choices and available tools. Ruby and other scripting languages are much more limited.
Sure, the language is really nice and has many features that make it so much less verbose and more powerful than something like Java. But a language is just one side of it. I need frameworks to get my job done. Most advocates don't understand that.
Sorry for the rant. I'm actually a happy user of both, you just need to know when to use the right tool for the right job :-)
S.
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Message #201046
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Java: Dead Like COBOL, Not Like Elvis?
Boy, the TSS knows how to pick out a quote...don't they? Maybe I should provide a little context. So when someone reads Beyond Java, the question inevitably comes up like this:
"So Java is dead, right?"
And I need to respond without reciting a dissertation including all of the ideas in the book. And I think this quote captures the idea: old languages will someday be pushed to the back burner and new ideas will be expressed in something else, and the community will move on to something else. But old successful languages don't die. And the economy around them doesn't disappear.
Since new languages come around every 10 years or so, Java is very much in danger of joining that camp. So when I say "Java is in danger", I mean it's in danger of losing the mindshare, community and innovation that go with being a dominant market leader. And I very much stand by that. I hope that Java can move more aggressively as a language, and I hope that we can take it forward as a platform that serves multiple languages.
But I hardly think one sensationalized quote captures the spirit of the whole interview, the book, or my opinions, and I think that pushing out such a quote as a headline is a cheap trick to generate traffic. Certainly no conversation of substance will come out of it.
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Message #201047
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Err
Bruce Tate is, for all intents and purposes, one of the stupidest people in Java.
The reason that Java is screwed is that people like him can actually succeed. Bruce is one of those guys (a bit like Jason Hunter, while we're dropping names) who thinks that writing a book means that his opinion is worthwhile and should be taken seriously for all eternity.
The real shame here is that tss would invite someone like this to TSSJS. It does lend credit to the argument that TSS is not really about java developers, but about traffic and trying to press the right buttons.
Brucey has already made his point, and gotten a freebie off of tss by having his previous deranged rantings highlighted, how often will this happen? What next, 'Toilet Bruce Used Found to Contain Ruby Shaped Log'?
Tell you what Brucey, if you think java is so dead, why don't you leave javaland forever, and stop annoying us with your pathetic attempts at selling more of your tawdry, tedious, and terminally boring books?
As for the JCP being ineffective, I suggest you point that out to the billions and billions of dollars tied up in application server vendors (including open source ones), jdbc drivers, jta, servlets, jsp pages, messaging services, j2se, j2me, and frameworks and libraries built on such (including your precious open source junk). Perhaps you could replace all of that with a quick tug and stroke of DHH, but I suspect most people would find that a surprising, not to mention perplexing decision.
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Message #201048
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Err
Bruce Tate is, for all intents and purposes, one of the stupidest people in Java.The reason that Java is screwed is that people like him can actually succeed. Bruce is one of those guys (a bit like Jason Hunter, while we're dropping names) who thinks that writing a book means that his opinion is worthwhile and should be taken seriously for all eternity.The real shame here is that tss would invite someone like this to TSSJS. It does lend credit to the argument that TSS is not really about java developers, but about traffic and trying to press the right buttons.Brucey has already made his point, and gotten a freebie off of tss by having his previous deranged rantings highlighted, how often will this happen? What next, 'Toilet Bruce Used Found to Contain Ruby Shaped Log'?Tell you what Brucey, if you think java is so dead, why don't you leave javaland forever, and stop annoying us with your pathetic attempts at selling more of your tawdry, tedious, and terminally boring books?As for the JCP being ineffective, I suggest you point that out to the billions and billions of dollars tied up in application server vendors (including open source ones), jdbc drivers, jta, servlets, jsp pages, messaging services, j2se, j2me, and frameworks and libraries built on such (including your precious open source junk). Perhaps you could replace all of that with a quick tug and stroke of DHH, but I suspect most people would find that a surprising, not to mention perplexing decision.
Ah, here is Hani and his negativity:-) As much as I dislike reading his (Hani's stuff), this one actually makes sense, and wow, no perverted jokes? Man are you feeling OK?
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Message #201049
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Yawn
Is this really news? Without knowing the full context, the statement "spending 4 months on a project" is a bit useless. I haven't worked on WebUI in a long time, but when I did, things rarely took 4 months. If it took four months, it means the planning sucked. Anyone know what the context of that statement and what kind of environment produced that result?
peter
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Message #201052
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Err
Bruce Tate is, for all intents and purposes, one of the stupidest people in Java.The reason that Java is screwed is that people like him can actually succeed. I won't address the personal stuff, beyond this, Hani. My wife and daughter found your writeup on the bile blog when they were just googling for her dad's name. Not cool. Do you have kids? Are you married?
But it does depend on what you want to do, doesn't it? If you're building hardcore enterprise apps with JTA and 2pc, I look like an idiot to you. If you're doing what most projects do with a language, just web-enabling a relational database with moderate scale, you may like the books and ideas a little better.
As for the JCP being ineffective,
The JCP *is* inneffective for the most part. EJB 1.x, 2.x were both fiascos. The logging mess was completely avoidable. Dog Lea's concurrency tools got it right...establish standards based on experience. That's the way we standardize languages and interfaces elsewhere, but for the most part, the JCP has not advanced Java as far as the open source movement in recent years.
I suggest you point that out to the billions and billions of dollars tied up in application server vendors (including open source ones), jdbc drivers, jta, servlets, jsp pages, messaging services, j2se, j2me, and frameworks and libraries built on such (including your precious open source junk).
How much of the app server stuff in WebSphere and WebLogic in the early days was based on C++? Yet it all advanced the state of the art in Java. I can think of a lot of ways to leverage those investments from within Ruby. If Sun were to move things toward being a platform rather than jsut a language, we'd see more projects like Jython that could leverage the capabilities of the JVM. They are already moving in that direction, with the JSR's behind Groovy and dynamic language support.
JRuby might get there anyway. You can certainly use it to drive your testing today, and live products already use it for things like scripting. If you're looking for coarse-grained integration, the Ruby web services stuff is already pretty good, ad REXML is incredible. But I wouldn't do everything in Ruby, though I do think we're at a similar point to 1996, when people were saying that Java would never run on a server, and applets were toys. You wouldn't have moved away from BEA to run your distributed transactions on Java then, but still, some people saw the writing on the wall. C++ is still a healthy language, but the state of the art usually advances somewhere else.
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Message #201053
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Yawn
Is this really news?
No. Java is still in its growth phase, with new areas of adoptions and new ideas. It has only just become the market leader in some aspects of IT, and I think it has a long life ahead of it, especially as the foundation and platform for a wider range of languages.
Do we really have to have such negatively headlined articles on TSS? It seems little more than an attempt at sensationalism to me.
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Message #201055
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re-read the article
ok, I re-read the article and I still can't tell why "the project" was stuck for 4 months. I'm totally guessing here, but it sounds like the developers were stuck in a rutt. The medicine for their rutt was to use a different language and framework.
My question is this. Why were they stuck in a rutt and failed to see the "real problem"? Is it because people develop habits and have a hard time criticizing themselves? It would be nice to have much more information about the context which produced that situation.
peter
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Message #201056
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Java: Dead Like COBOL, Not Like Elvis?
It's amazing to me how much negative reaction there is to the subject of Ruby on Rails within the Java community. I think Bruce has discovered what you can't say in the Java community. One thing I do agree with in this thread is Ilya's point that Ruby on Rails seems to be kind of kludgy to set up for a production system. That is a problem that I think we can all agree will get solved easily over time. Remember, at some point in Java all we have was Tomcat 1.0, no WebSphere, WebLogic, Resin, JBoss, etc. Other than that, to people who seem to be viamently defending Java, what are you so afraid of? I think if you take the time to look at Ruby on Rails, start building some web apps with it, you will see that there are things about it that are just better than with Java. I'm not going to go into all the details here, but there many nice things about it. At a minimum, learning Ruby on Rails will make you a better programmer. If Ruby does one day take over Java, then so be it. It's not happening tomorrow or even this year, but why is the idea of that so offending to Java developers?
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Message #201057
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Java: not dead, but ugly indeed
Greetings,
Bruce's comment of Java being "dead likce COBOL, not like Elvis" is asinine. The sheer amount of new developments in this area shows that a lot of people continue to work on it at a pace not seen before in any programming language. Statements like that are as bad as those from the Java fanboys, from the casual hobbyist who just discovered the language to the JCP members who try to cover the sun with their thumb and pretend that there are no problems in Java land.
Ruby on Rails and a cartload of other languages and platforms are evolving. The key, for Bruce and anyone else, is to figure out what the problem at hand is and to apply the best tool that solves the problem. Engaging in sophomoric name-calling (MyLanguage is better than your language!) is stupid. These things have an application domain. Java isn't the best solution for all cases, nor is Ruby or .Net. Why do all these talking heads want to pose these issues as "MyLanguage is killing X" all the time? Java was supposed to kill C++... and both have healthy mindshare percentages. For something "dead", Java has the largest number of developers of any modern programming language.
Now if we look at reasons for why Java is screwed, they are a combination of two big factors: the Java programmers' assumption that everything they'll need is in the API packages and the JCP's reluctance to evolve the platform in significant ways.
Java programming and frameworks for the web let even mediocre programmers be successful. That creates a mind set of complacency among developers who become too lazy to analyze and implement clean solutions and rely too heavily on the frameworks. These people should learn that the Java API doesn't always have the best answer. The indiscriminate use of the Java API in all its forms can create a myriad of performance and scalibility problems that most of these coders can't even comprehend. Most of these "API jockeys" who claim to be aces at Java programming can't solve the simplest problems when moving from, say, the Java web development platforms to J2ME or OSGi. A missing API paralyzes them because at that point it becomes obvious that they don't know what they're doing and can't implement the things they need themselves.
The other problem is the JCP. The process is slow and too protective of the interests of its members. They are too afraid to make significant changes to the Java platform. Many of the JSRs are purposedly incomplete so that a Java solution won't solve all issues in a problem domain, stepping on third-party vendors' proprietary technology. The billions of dollars invested in the JCP are a two-edged sword: they are advancing, albeit at a snail's pace, the Java technologies they review; on the other hand, the process seems to stall or shape the JSRs in unhealthy directions when one of the proposed technologies threatens one or more of the members' markets.
So, is Java dead like Elvis or COBOL? Neither. Java technologies are thriving. I'd say that Bruce was just trolling on that one. The real question is, is Java elegant enough and evolving in healthy ways to NOT die? The answer is "no". The hubris shown by the people who have vested interests in Java is blinding them to this; they're becoming complacent. There are many other technologies that *could* overtake Java programming/platforms and that are evolving at a more rapid pace.
Nothing would make me happier than seeing Java evolve at a quick pace and maintain its leading position... I just don't see it happening.
Cheers,
E
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Message #201061
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Java: Dead Like COBOL, Not Like Elvis?
Since new languages come around every 10 years or so, Java is very much in danger of joining that camp. So when I say "Java is in danger", I mean it's in danger of losing the mindshare, community and innovation that go with being a dominant market leader. And I very much stand by that. I hope that Java can move more aggressively as a language, and I hope that we can take it forward as a platform that serves multiple languages.
What shape is ruby in? Its birthday will be in 13th birthday will be in 7 days
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/20030224.html
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Message #201062
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Java: Dead Like COBOL, Not Like Elvis?
Since new languages come around every 10 years or so, Java is very much in danger of joining that camp. So when I say "Java is in danger", I mean it's in danger of losing the mindshare, community and innovation that go with being a dominant market leader. And I very much stand by that. I hope that Java can move more aggressively as a language, and I hope that we can take it forward as a platform that serves multiple languages.
What shape is ruby in? Its birthday 13th birthday will be in 7 days
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/20030224.html
preview preview preview
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Message #201063
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Java: Dead Like COBOL, Not Like Elvis?
It's amazing to me how much negative reaction there is to the subject of Ruby on Rails within the Java community. I think Bruce has discovered what you can't say in the Java community. One thing I do agree with in this thread is Ilya's point that Ruby on Rails seems to be kind of kludgy to set up for a production system. That is a problem that I think we can all agree will get solved easily over time. Remember, at some point in Java all we have was Tomcat 1.0, no WebSphere, WebLogic, Resin, JBoss, etc. Other than that, to people who seem to be viamently defending Java, what are you so afraid of? I think if you take the time to look at Ruby on Rails, start building some web apps with it, you will see that there are things about it that are just better than with Java. I'm not going to go into all the details here, but there many nice things about it. At a minimum, learning Ruby on Rails will make you a better programmer. If Ruby does one day take over Java, then so be it. It's not happening tomorrow or even this year, but why is the idea of that so offending to Java developers?
I agree, it's offending, and I might know the reason. Most developers, though they might love their job as a developer, are somehow insecure. They are scared that if the language they are experts in goes away, or even shrinks in market share, they won't be as competitive in the market, and might either have a hard time finding a job and/or settle for less pay. This is BS, because good programming, design, architecture principles is what truly matters. I'd take someone with great OO design skills and no knowledge of some language before someone with knowledge of the language inside out (the core) and weak OO skills. I think learning knew technologies, will make us all better at what we do. If you learn some great way of doing something "The ruby way", maybe you and others will eventually turn it into a design pattern in Java, which will benefit us all.
As far as Ruby's deployment platforms, it's only a matter of time, until some company and/or OS project jumps on the bandwagon. But I think there should still be some standardization, whether by a formal committee and/or by the community.
Ilya
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Message #201064
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Bruce does anything to sell his books
"...cannot tell me that an experienced team of two Java programmers spend 4 months working on an application..."
"...does anything to sell ..."
and thus most of the book writers. A good writer never will be a good developer.
good.
by lujan99@usa.net
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Message #201065
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Err
Regarding the personal stuff, if you're going to stand up and know you'll say things that are controversial, then the intarweb being what it is, it's not a huge leap of imagination to realise that someone somewhere will be annoyed. Don't like it? Play it safe then and hide in anonymity.
You're right in that it does depend on what you're trying to achieve. Hell, php is a great solution for many problems, as are perl, ruby, c#, VB.net, etc etc. Duh, horses for courses. Are you making this clear in your cheerleading? Saying that java is dead for example to me says that you're just after glamour and bling. If you mean what you said about RoR being appriopriate for some things, then I fail to see how you get from there to 'java is dead'.
The JCP has made its fair share of mistakes. I note the lack of mention of ejb3 in your list of JCP fiascos. Or of JSP, servlets, JDBC, JMS, JTA, and others. Doug Lea's concurrency is part of the JCP process, java.util.concurrent is the result of that; taking community stuff and formalising it. Are you saying it should have never gotten into the JDK?
I agree that specs should evolve from existing best practices on the whole, with specifications formalising what people have proven to be 'the way forward'. Don't you think that's happening aplenty currently?
See despite saying that, you also bitch about lack of innovation. JDK5 includes a lot of 'innovations'. Annotations for example are pretty powerful and handy, once you grok them. These didn't really come from the 'community', they came from the expert group.
So I fail to see how Java lacks either innovation or community driven specs. It's very easy (trust me, it's my speciality) to find exceptions, and be able to point and laugh at some small aspect that flouts the general rule and hold it up as a trend, but leave that sort of bullshit pulpit thumping to the experts, if you want to be taken seriously and not have people write mean things about you.
Finally, yes the JCP does move slowly. Care you to find me specifications that move significantly faster? I'm sorry but some random norwegian 20something obnoxious loudmouth does not a spec make. Maybe you're just trying to overcome some kind of midlife crisis by hero-worshipping someone younger and 'cooler'.
Your argument is I'm sure that specifications don't matter. Sure, they don't matter to people like you who spend all their time 'just web-enabling a relational database with moderate scale', but they matter a lot more to companies who don't get all their work done by consultants who pop in and out for 3 months, and care about old fashioned ideas like sustainability, maintenance, industry support, mindshare, and some measure of future proofing.
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Message #201068
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Err
but they matter a lot more to companies who don't get all their work done by consultants who pop in and out for 3 months, and care about old fashioned ideas like sustainability, maintenance, industry support, mindshare, and some measure of future proofing.
Wow, now that's what I call a post. Is there anyone left from the "Hani-Suleiman-has-been-elected-to-the-JCP: WTF???" group that wants to make jokes out of it?
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Message #201069
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Err
RoR: Does the "effectiveness" of RoR mostly come from the pretty scripting language or the framework? From my intensive 15 minute study it appears much of RoR's productivity comes from limiting the config by choosing sensible defaults. Seems to me the framework could be copied and the scripty parts could be handled with, well a JVM-compatible scripting language. This could be made easier (fingers crossed) with the scripting hooks provided by Mustang.
I know this comes from our current political climate but it is possible (and productive) to criticize something without hating it. I do think it is goofy to think Java the platform is headed for the back burner right now when so much activity is still present. I think it is more interesting to ask if "standardized" Java is becoming less relevant.
Maybe the Java community is moving toward getting it right: Have a bunch of competing open-source projects try to solve a problem. Take the best ideas and evolve a standard. Isn't that how EJB 3.0 was hatched?
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Message #201070
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RoR vs Java Again???
Ruby on Rails really has a chance to make a dent in many of the web UI/database problems that Java was designed to solve. Come on people, this is not a valid comparison, RoR does not compete with JEE, I like to see how they do an complex application with an DB with 100+ tables with ActiveRecord, you cannot base your application 100% on the DB design, it is a poor design, the DB and business rules need to be separated. RoR IMHO does not work for legacy DBs and RoRis JUST for smaller projects, TSS need to stop posting articles that make wrong comparisons...
I just can say: +++ +++ +++ +++!!!
You definitely mentioned the right think. See also
http://hanzz.lbs-logics.at/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=64&Itemid=2
for my comments.
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Message #201071
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Err
Regarding the personal stuff, if you're going to stand up and know you'll say things that are controversial, then the intarweb being what it is, it's not a huge leap of imagination to realise that someone somewhere will be annoyed.
Are you married? Have kids?
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Message #201073
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Err - parenting
My wife and daughter found your writeup on the bile blog when they were just googling for her dad's name. Not cool.
If your daughter is a teenager she probably already thinks you are the stupidest person on the planet. Its hard-wired into their brains you know.
Besides, you could use Hani's post as a teaching experience:
"You see honey, there are people in the world who are a-holes..."
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Message #201074
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Where RoR runs out, Java keeps on running
I've been going through Ruby, enjoy it, like it better then Python, never really dug PHP. That being said, I indeed came up as a Cobol programmer, and there are still lots of them around, then I became a Java programmer and that became my main bag. I'm doing RoR a bit out of fear that I'm going to become some of these folks who still cling to Cobol, and refuse to pick up a book, etc...I know some. So in some ways, you have to follow the buzz and chase the shiney objects. But my recent experiences really are a caution to look at a point case (web-to-db) as an arguement about the demise of a general language, which I would assert Ruby is not...at least not yet, and by a long shot.
So I'm cranking out web apps using J2EE, and we get re-organized...I had to spin up really fast on FIPA agents, Rules engines, Semantic web, mobile development, RFID, and now it's growing into things like JINI and GPS. The point here is that I was able to start a bit higher up the mountain because of the fact that I was adopting a general language as my main bag...so I had JADE, and Jena, and Jess, and Drools, J2ME, etc. The RFID middleware we used was Java, the GPS is low level port stuff using Java, etc...
I just see all of us presented with weirder and weirder combinations of things as things become smarter, mobile, and more distributed...what the heck is going to replace Java in that space...and why exactly? Certainly not because you have to cast or use a semi-colon...right?
Anyhow...
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Message #201079
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"Enterprise"????
Every programmer I know jokes about how pathetic EJB's were and how they will never touch them again with a ten foot pole. On the other hand they love Java and feel very productive these days. Mainly they feel productive because they use a lot of open source frameworks, and relatively few "Enterprise" frameworks -- they've utterly ditched anything EJB related. The whole term, "Enterprise", has taken on a taint because it was hijacked by companies trying to foist crappy product on top of even worse specs. The artificial distinction created by sun around "Enterprise" Java has really created a backlash in the Java community."Enterprise Java"?? C'mon! The emperor has no clothes.
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Message #201080
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Where RoR runs out, Java keeps on running
I just see all of us presented with weirder and weirder combinations of things as things become smarter, mobile, and more distributed...what the heck is going to replace Java in that space...and why exactly? Certainly not because you have to cast or use a semi-colon...right?Anyhow...
+1 - Exactly, it wasn't Java the language that was a paradigm shift in the 90's it was Java the platform and its intersection with the internet age.
I'm not 100% on the history of this but I don't think it is ever the language in a vacum but it is the combination of a language and an external force that made its success.
C - Personal PCs: Needed a good, reasonably easy fast langauge to write programs back when hardware was expensive.
COBOL - Needed a good langauge for accounting when mainframes were coming online.
Ruby's nifty web-app framework is interesting but not going to be the "next big thing".
My guess is that whatever language makes the next-generation internet features (real-time video, grid computing, security, etc - whatever) easiest to use will be the one to replace Java in the spotlight.
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Message #201082
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Where RoR runs out, Java keeps on running
I've been going through Ruby, enjoy it, like it better then Python, never really dug PHP. That being said, I indeed came up as a Cobol programmer, and there are still lots of them around, then I became a Java programmer and that became my main bag. I'm doing RoR a bit out of fear that I'm going to become some of these folks who still cling to Cobol, and refuse to pick up a book, etc...I know some. So in some ways, you have to follow the buzz and chase the shiney objects. But my recent experiences really are a caution to look at a point case (web-to-db) as an arguement about the demise of a general language, which I would assert Ruby is not...at least not yet, and by a long shot.So I'm cranking out web apps using J2EE, and we get re-organized...I had to spin up really fast on FIPA agents, Rules engines, Semantic web, mobile development, RFID, and now it's growing into things like JINI and GPS. The point here is that I was able to start a bit higher up the mountain because of the fact that I was adopting a general language as my main bag...so I had JADE, and Jena, and Jess, and Drools, J2ME, etc. The RFID middleware we used was Java, the GPS is low level port stuff using Java, etc...I just see all of us presented with weirder and weirder combinations of things as things become smarter, mobile, and more distributed...what the heck is going to replace Java in that space...and why exactly? Certainly not because you have to cast or use a semi-colon...right?Anyhow...
An excellent post. And that's pretty much what I advocate in the book, and in the interview. I do think that the next big thing will probably be a lot of little things. We're going to hit a wall with concurrency soon, as the new parallel processors come out. Ruby is not it in that space, but if you've read much production Java code, a whole lot of it works pretty much by accident, so you know Java's not it in that space either. So do we see a comeback of functional languages, like Erlang? Maybe...
One niche that I am watching closely is that niche between what you should be doing with a visual basic or php and what you should be doing in Java. That's a space that's several million developers strong. that's been my target market for my books, my courseware, and my consulting practice. RoR has a lot to offer in that space: AJAX, Active Record, the integration, the simplicity, the metaprogramming.
But my whole point for about a year is that it's about time to start paying attention again. Java *is* showing signs of age. And you need to know what's out there. And you do need to follow the buzz. 200K downloads in under a year is significant. (I think that's about right...)
So my best guess is that Java is going to undergo a transition period very soon, where it's going to change from the language of choice, in general, to the language of choice for big enterprise. From there? Who knows.
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Message #201083
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Maybe Bruce is not the best programmer...
So Bruce couldn't do it in 4 months with Java and could do it in 4 days with RubyOnRails? That would be a productivity increase of more than 30x. Even the biggest RubyOnRails fanboy would admit that this number is much too high. But what does this tell about Bruce? Maybe he is not the best Java programmer and Ruby is just right for him or that he is doing the best to sell his (upcoming) RubyOnRails book...
Maybe ROR makes the developers happy, but does it make the customers happy given bidding schemes like the following (http://www.relevancellc.com/blogs/?p=92) and the result being a webapp in one of the slowest interpreted languages with almost no developers for maintenance (ever heard of lock-in)?
quote from above url: "
* For applications in the Rails sweet spot (CRUD+Ajax on the web) our Rails price tends to be 30-50% less than the same bid implemented in Java.
* For applications that are nowhere near the Rails sweet spot (do you know what these are?), our Rails price tends to be only 10% less than the same project implemented in Java
* Applications are completed twice as quickly in Rails.
* When customers want an hourly rate, our hourly rate for Rails work is slightly more than our hourly rate for Java work. However, given that applications are finished 30-50% faster, Ruby/Rails still delivers more per dollar.
"
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Message #201085
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Err - parenting
My wife and daughter found your writeup on the bile blog when they were just googling for her dad's name. Not cool. If your daughter is a teenager she probably already thinks you are the stupidest person on the planet. Its hard-wired into their brains you know.Besides, you could use Hani's post as a teaching experience: "You see honey, there are people in the world who are a-holes..."
+1.
All negativity aside, this is the funniest thing I've read for a while. I wonder if we can get back to the discussion at hand though....
I think any prediction of the death of Java is premature. The same goes for Elvis (been to Vegas lately?). Besides, Java "died" once already: its original goal as a free-the-world-from-Microsoft silver bullet certainly didn't pan out.
After that all Java ended up doing is dominating server-side processing and cell phones. A shame really, that first death. Maybe this second death will end up being the rebirth of Java on the client side :)
Peter
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Message #201086
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Java: Dead Like COBOL, Not Like Elvis?
Boy, the TSS knows how to pick out a quote...don't they?
...
and I think that pushing out such a quote as a headline is a cheap trick to generate traffic Well with respect TSS simply took the same headline of the quoted article ("Integrated Developer News" whoever that is)
Next book going to be called "Bitter Java Programmer" ?
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Message #201087
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Where RoR runs out, Java keeps on running
Bruce keeps going back to this 4mo vs. 2 days crap. If I was caught up putting in practice all of the patterns and xml heavy frameworks-- yeah, 4 months. Throw all that away and regress into scriptlets and simple OO-- 2 days. If anything, the community is consuming itself with a bunch of cancerous solutions. Nothing is perfect (not even our MVC landscape), but there's a heck of a lot more opportunity in Java to go much further than the cop-out, "well, RoR great for *simple* applications"
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Message #201088
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Err
Awe crap. First Hani gets elected to the JCP, and now I find myself agreeing with him. What next? Men on the moon?
Frankly, I'm tired of these old windbags (Taters, includes), spouting about the wonders of RoR and their perceived suckiness of Java. There is simply just way too much noise coming from your side of the room over a quasi-scripting language.
Aside from the large amounts of oxygen you guys are sucking up, its evident to everyone in the room that:
a. TSS posts this garbage to increase traffic and their ad revenue. +1, for being a tabloid, guys.
b. The old windbags can't build a community based on the merits of RoR alone, and so must find a target fish to suck a community from. You're the remorrah of the Java community. +1, on sucking.
c. You've tapped out your careers in the java space and are moving on to, what you hope will be, another language that will allow you to spew endless amounts of books and speeches. +1, on the profit motive.
So take your RoR, your hot-air marketing, your stapler, and go away, please. Let the rest of us continue with our sucky language and we'll all agree to laugh at each other from afar. ;-)
STAY METAL!
Roy Russo
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Message #201089
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Maybe Bruce is not the best programmer...
I'm definitely not the best programmer, but let me clarify this statement again. (This is the third time around on tss.) The second time around, you're definitely going to be faster. A lot faster. You know the data model better, and the web flow better. But the difference was great enough for us to take notice. Primarily, we were a perfect rails app. We existed to cram data into a sophisticated schema. ActiveRecord is very lazy; for our app, that was ok. Our user interface was simple. We had very little business logic. In this case, the problem fit ActiveRecord better than it fit Hibernate. (I'd bet that for projects in general, they would fit Active Record more often than Java guys would admit, but less frequently than the Rails guys would admit.)
I'd estimate that if I stay squarely in the Rails sweet spot, I code from 5-10x faster. If I have to bend the framework around the schema, it's probably about 3-5x. If I have to do significant AJAX or if the model is easy to bend to Active Record, the numbers go up. The lack of refactoring support costs me some, but I make it back up by having rake and the interactive consoles.
Now, that's just the coding time. If you spend most of your days in meetings, you're not going to notice much of a difference. But if you can spend most of your time coding (most projects don't), it's significant.
I'm going to drop off of this thread for a while. I've got to go get some work done...but I hope I've clarified the statements in the interview. I don't think Java's dead; I do think it's in danger of losing its market dominance and leadership.
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Message #201090
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Where RoR runs out, Java keeps on running
>>>
But my whole point for about a year is that it's about time to start paying attention again. Java *is* showing signs of age. And you need to know what's out there. And you do need to follow the buzz. 200K downloads in under a year is significant. (I think that's about right...)
<<<
What is out there and why we need to know that?
Is it for putting more buzzword into our resumes or books?
I think us jumping from one cool thing to another will only hurt software industry in a long term.
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Message #201091
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How to quantify 4 Months vs 4 Days
Would Bruce be willing to publish the Java code that took 4 months to write and the Ruby code that took 4 days? One thing that I know is that once I solve a puzzle, the second solving takes much less time. I look at some code that I wrote 5 years ago and I am aghast at the inefficiencies.
John Murray
Sobetech
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Message #201093
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minor nit
It's not a huge point, but WebSphere, WebLogic, and Resin have all been around longer than Tomcat.
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Message #201096
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Err
Your argument is I'm sure that specifications don't matter. Sure, they don't matter to people like you who spend all their time 'just web-enabling a relational database with moderate scale', but they matter a lot more to companies who don't get all their work done by consultants who pop in and out for 3 months, and care about old fashioned ideas like sustainability, maintenance, industry support, mindshare, and some measure of future proofing.
Yes, nicely put.
I cut my OO teeth on Apple & Tektronix Smalltalk two decades ago, and know its advantages and disadvantages. Ruby looks like it it is the triumphant reinvention of Smalltalk.
Smalltalk is a wonderful scripting environment, but it is a right royal pain in the backside for someone that is trying to extend/modify another average engineer's codebase.
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Message #201097
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Err - parenting
Maybe this second death will end up being the rebirth of Java on the client side :)Peter Most definitely.
So I wonder how many lifes Java has? Maybe the 1.5/5.0 code name (Tiger) is an indication. About 9?
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Message #201099
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Java: Dead Like COBOL, Not Like Elvis?
In an interview with idevnews.com, author Bruce Tate says Java/J2EE is facing dramatic change, and could be "dead like COBOL, not like Elvis."
I didn't see Bruce Tate saying "dead like COBOL, not like Elvis". That is what the interviewer said.
Tell you what Brucey, if you think java is so dead, why don't you leave javaland forever, and stop annoying us with your pathetic attempts at selling more of your tawdry, tedious, and terminally boring books?
Who wants to place bets on more people wanting bileboy to leave "javaland" than Bruce Tate?
But on to the meat of the issue. Java has a problem (that .NET doesn't), in that Java is a language, a virtual machine, and a set of APIs/libraries/specifications at the same time.
Java, the language, has issues. There's too much boilerplate which means it's not very readable. Yes, I said it. Too much boilerplate makes a language not very readable - unlike what a bunch of morons have been spewing for god knows how many years about Java. The only thing good is that you got your IDEs to spew out a bunch of crap.
Ruby is probably not "the answer". There are too many people that will resist dynamic typing, but there are languages now and nothing stopping Sun from incorporating many of the ideas of a dynamic language into another statically-typed language that plays nicely with the JVM and the libraries via type inferencing, a macro system, and other stuff.
Gosling just said in an interview http://www.gotw.ca/publications/c_family_interview.htm that he wishes he would have put in multiple return values. And you don't have pass by reference in Java so you end up with a bunch of little stupid classes to do simple stuff.
The good things about Java are the IDEs, tons of open source and free code, lots of industry support, jobs...
But it's not too early for Sun to start thinking and even implementing something on top of the JVM (is it too late for Dolphin?). Don't wait for Java to become as old as Fortran to do the Fortress of Java.
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Message #201100
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Dead like PL/1?
Ilaya,
lack of JEE support for portlets? <snip> other languages have that support?
I know that last year C# 2 shiped support for WebParts and Master paages, and that it works out of the box in the free SDK!
How hard do developers and clients have to work to integrate vendors "left behinds" ? And then explain hours you had to do bit-twidling in the tech stack. Can they at least try to compete.
JEE including or not including Portlets is important.
.V
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Message #201104
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Err
U should see these guys when they give tech talks. These self-appointed gurus are so full of themselves man! Sell books, tech seminars... there exists a whole breed of such "gurus" who make predictions. Often people complain that his are the most boring tech talks. Raving and ranting about how in his crystal ball he sees end of java and all that.
I wish people like Bruce would stop talking crap. If u dont like Java Bruce go on have fun with Ruby or whichever u'r mind pleases.
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Message #201105
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Java: Dead Like COBOL, Not Like Elvis?
Other than that, to people who seem to be viamently defending Java, what are you so afraid of? I think if you take the time to look at Ruby on Rails, start building some web apps with it, you will see that there are things about it that are just better than with Java.
I code in both, and I'm about ready to start writing really nasty replies to articles like this. Why, because I'm in this fourm to read about Java and I don't want to read a bunch of stupid out of context, generally unconstructive crap about some other langauge. When I'm on theserverside.com I don't want to read about why C# is so great or how Ruby is so easy to use. I'm not hear for that and generaly the ruby fan boys that comment here are almost never constructive.
A big part of that is the fact that TTS has a problem with needing to post flame bait articles and I'm really f#$%ing tired of that too.
I have the same inverse feeling when I'm on a ruby or c# fourm. I don't want to read a bunch of stupid crap from trolling Java developers, acting the same way that ruby developers do on this fourm.
I agree with Hani in part. If you don't like Java anymore or are not offering something constructive get the hell out of here. If you programing in many langauges then a like parts of some better then other great, keep it constructive, or keep it to yourself.
If you are on TTS and you don't like java or think java is dead, then please leave, or at least make your posts funny.
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Message #201106
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Dead like PL/1?
Ilaya,lack of JEE support for portlets? <snip> other languages have that support? I know that last year C# 2 shiped support for WebParts and Master paages, and that it works out of the box in the free SDK! How hard do developers and clients have to work to integrate vendors "left behinds" ? And then explain hours you had to do bit-twidling in the tech stack. Can they at least try to compete.JEE including or not including Portlets is important..V
But C# has other drawbacks, single vendor, one platform, etc... I never compare JEE to C#, I don't see why other do. Unless we're ready to switch to a single platform enterprise, and all but windows, it takes a last seat in my book. It's great for analytical client applications though, or maybe putting a lightweight front end to OLTP.
Ilya
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Message #201107
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Java: Dead Like COBOL, Not Like Elvis?
Hi Frank,
But it's not too early for Sun to start thinking and even implementing something on top of the JVM (is it too late for Dolphin?). Don't wait for Java to become as old as Fortran to do the Fortress of Java.
Aren't they doing that with Mustang's support for scripting languages (JSR 223)? I haven't looked into it too deeply, but my understanding is that they're providing enough hooks that you can put JavaScript, Python, or pretty much anything on top of Java.
Or are you advocating something else?
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Message #201108
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Analogy
Wow almost 50 replies to a RoR thread and nobody has said "When you have a hammer in your hands, everything look like a nail" so far. I'm confused! And Rolf doesn't seem to post anymore. What's going on TSS?
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Message #201109
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Java: Dead Like COBOL, Not Like Elvis?
I think, developers want a new language/platform every 10 years or so, which stimulates them intellectually. Java, while rich, is showing its age and those who get bored by the mundane idiosyncrasies of the language look for alternatives. 10+ years ago, C++ developers (including me :-( ) used to feel this way when someone says, "Java is the way to go." I don't mean to say that RoR is better than Java or the future, but it is at least "different." Spring framework convinced us that there is a simpler, lighter way to develop enterprise apps. Hibernate convinced us that there is a better alternative to entity beans. These and similar open source frameworks have so much influance on Java platform that EJB3 incorporated many of these notions. In other words, innovations are happening outside the scope of JSRs and standards. And slowly, those innovations look beyond the scope of Java. Whether we like it or not, sooner or later, there will be a new language/platform that we need to learn, in order to earn a living.
Bruce's comments may have some faults and RoR may or may not be the future, but I will commend him for his courage to speak his mind. It is dangerous to believe that Java is everything and nothing can be better than that.
Peace.
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Message #201110
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Java: Dead Like COBOL, Not Like Elvis?
Remember when Smalltalk was going to take over the world?
Clipper? VB?
I’m still waiting.
The true strength of Java is it adapts to changing conditions. Ten years from now, it will still be called Java, but it may be unrecognizable compared to today.
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Message #201111
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Err
Regarding the personal stuff, if you're going to stand up and know you'll say things that are controversial, then the intarweb being what it is, it's not a huge leap of imagination to realise that someone somewhere will be annoyed. Don't like it? Play it safe then and hide in anonymity.
Yes, but you don't have to personally attack people, this is the lowest a person will ever go in their life. Actualy, it usualy can be traced back to a lacking of something on your behalf, for which you must make up by attacking people.
Your argument is I'm sure that specifications don't matter. Sure, they don't matter to people like you who spend all their time 'just web-enabling a relational database with moderate scale', but they matter a lot more to companies who don't get all their work done by consultants who pop in and out for 3 months, and care about old fashioned ideas like sustainability, maintenance, industry support, mindshare, and some measure of future proofing.
+1
Specs matter alot, and until Ruby has anything similar to JCP and/or commercial support, no large company will truly embrace it and bet it's IT on it.
Ilya
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Message #201115
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Rails has a long way to come...
... but, they are moving fast, and in the right direction.
There are simple and standard solutions to common problems in Rails and in Ruby, where as I've found Java to have complex and non-standard approaches to the same problems.
I love the fact that Rails isn't owned by someone like Sun.
It's OSS, it has an amazing community, and it's headed in the right direction. It's also extremely intuitive, fast to develop in, and ... it's fun.
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Message #201116
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Java: Dead Like COBOL, Not Like Elvis?
Aren't they doing that with Mustang's support for scripting languages (JSR 223)? I haven't looked into it too deeply, but my understanding is that they're providing enough hooks that you can put JavaScript, Python, or pretty much anything on top of Java.
Or are you advocating something else?
IIRC, the bytecode instruction that will make it easier for dynamic language implementations on the JVM is going into Dolphin.
But Python, Ruby, Javascript are probably not what most Java developers want. Dynamically typed languages have "issues" when playing with IDEs and possibly some performance considerations. It's probably possible to get 90% of the dynamic languages agility in a statically-typed language. And it would seem that PHBs need some kind of "officialdom" from Sun and/or IBM. Looking at something like Boo that was built specifically for .NET would seems to be a starting point.
Groovy seems to have issues.
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Message #201118
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Dead like PL/1?
Ilaya,lack of JEE support for portlets? <snip> other languages have that support? I know that last year C# 2 shiped support for WebParts and Master paages, and that it works out of the box in the free SDK! How hard do developers and clients have to work to integrate vendors "left behinds" ? And then explain hours you had to do bit-twidling in the tech stack. Can they at least try to compete.JEE including or not including Portlets is important..V
I do not know, but any modern J2EE portal supports portlets. And some of them are also free. I do not see a problem.
Also you can bundle your specific Swing layout manager with your app if you want. I do not see it as an overkill ...
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Message #201119
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Where RoR runs out, Java keeps on running
An excellent post. And that's pretty much what I advocate in the book, and in the interview.
It's easy to praise others when they agree with you. :)
One niche that I am watching closely is that niche between what you should be doing with a visual basic or php and what you should be doing in Java. That's a space that's several million developers strong. that's been my target market for my books, my courseware, and my consulting practice.
As a former Visual Basic and PHP programmer, I can't say how happy I was to discover Java's potential for building web applications. I agree that VB, PHP and even Perl still have an edge on Java when it comes to RAD, but this edge is disappearing as a result of open-source innovation in the Java space, JCP standards, industry momentum, the evolution of the Java language, and the list goes on.
<quote>Java *is* showing signs of age.</quote>
It's called maturity and this is a *good thing*.
<quote>And you need to know what's out there. And you do need to follow the buzz. </quote>
I advocate ongoing research but not impatience and hasty decisions. Bruce, it sounds to me like rather than addressing the issues within Java you have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
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Message #201122
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Where RoR runs out, Java keeps on running
I've been going through Ruby, enjoy it, like it better then Python, never really dug PHP. That being said, I indeed came up as a Cobol programmer, and there are still lots of them around, then I became a Java programmer and that became my main bag. I'm doing RoR a bit out of fear that I'm going to become some of these folks who still cling to Cobol, and refuse to pick up a book, etc...I know some. So in some ways, you have to follow the buzz and chase the shiney objects. But my recent experiences really are a caution to look at a point case (web-to-db) as an arguement about the demise of a general language, which I would assert Ruby is not...at least not yet, and by a long shot.So I'm cranking out web apps using J2EE, and we get re-organized...I had to spin up really fast on FIPA agents, Rules engines, Semantic web, mobile development, RFID, and now it's growing into things like JINI and GPS. The point here is that I was able to start a bit higher up the mountain because of the fact that I was adopting a general language as my main bag...so I had JADE, and Jena, and Jess, and Drools, J2ME, etc. The RFID middleware we used was Java, the GPS is low level port stuff using Java, etc...I just see all of us presented with weirder and weirder combinations of things as things become smarter, mobile, and more distributed...what the heck is going to replace Java in that space...and why exactly? Certainly not because you have to cast or use a semi-colon...right?Anyhow... An excellent post. And that's pretty much what I advocate in the book, and in the interview. I do think that the next big thing will probably be a lot of little things. We're going to hit a wall with concurrency soon, as the new parallel processors come out. Ruby is not it in that space, but if you've read much production Java code, a whole lot of it works pretty much by accident, so you know Java's not it in that space either. So do we see a comeback of functional languages, like Erlang? Maybe...One niche that I am watching closely is that niche between what you should be doing with a visual basic or php and what you should be doing in Java. That's a space that's several million developers strong. that's been my target market for my books, my courseware, and my consulting pra
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