Monday, September 29, 2003

Code Generation Network looks interesting. And I like the way this guy Jack Herrington is righteously bashing Java over on Greenspun's comments

The reality is that the history of Java is a litany of failure. It never worked on toasters. So they tried Applets. Now if you read "Bitter Java" Applets are listed as an anti-pattern. So they tried the desktop with Swing, and NOBODY shipped any of that. The only shipping Swing apps are Java IDEs.

So they tried the Web Server, and have basically hyped that to the point where they showed a perceived success. Sun was talking about Java 'Enterprise Applications' on the server when there was no justification or history behind it. Publishing white papers that said that Java scaled better than PHP when there was no evidence to support that, and when in fact, it was quite the contrary in reality.

Now that Microsoft has come along with .NET you see Sun trying to swing the Java community back to being interested in mobile devices. So this optimal 'enterprise language' is now the best for small 'mobile computing' applications and games programming.

We have come full circle! This toaster language grew wings and became an amazing enterprise applications language, but then back to being a toaster language. Without ever making substantive changes to syntax! Quite amazing.


Bravo! Though of course, like all sweeping rhetoric, people can pick holes in it. But on a gut level ... I like this guy! (Though he may not thank me for applauding this in particular ;-) given that Code Gen Net itself is not at all rant-like, but serious, interesting, and has loads of good stuff about code generation for Java and Enterprise computing.)

On another note, at a party on Saturday I met someone who promised to introduce me to the Brasilia Java User's Group which is apparently very big. Well, I need to network here so it would be interesting to meet. Should I try to tone down my criticism and be politic? Nah! I should go in hard and try win some benighted souls back to the paths of virtue and scripting goodness :-)

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