"In 2008 the Ruby On Rails mentality will continue to prevail. In the Java world, Grails is the most likely to benefit from it. (...) It could also be something based around Spring as their current MVC solution is not very good and very old fashioned."I don't think I will be right with the provocative Java is dead. A post recently titled No Future In Java makes some good points about where the future of Java still is: the web applications. Grails is probably today the best contender in the Java world, far ahead from the others, and it leverages the Java developers. However I am not sure one can say that RIA is a fad, or that RIA will only be done in a super powerful browser in the future. Microsoft might be a game changer here. The real advantages of the browser application so far are: easy deployment (the killer argument IMHO), "simple" security. I would not be surprised if in the near future, Microsoft advertises a solution for RIA easily deployed, based on standard protocols (HTTP?), a bit like IBM does with Eclipse RIA, but much more ambitious.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Grails Spring Union Not Surprising
Looking out at some old post. I found out I was not far from the truth in January 2008 when I stated:
Grails Spring Union Not Surprising
Looking out at some old post. I found out I was not far from the truth in January 2008 when I stated:
"In 2008 the Ruby On Rails mentality will continue to prevail. In the Java world, Grails is the most likely to benefit from it. (...) It could also be something based around Spring as their current MVC solution is not very good and very old fashioned."I don't think I will be right with the provocative Java is dead. A post recently titled No Future In Java makes some good points about where the future of Java still is: the web applications. Grails is probably today the best contender in the Java world, far ahead from the others, and it leverages the Java developers. However I am not sure one can say that RIA is a fad, or that RIA will only be done in a super powerful browser in the future. Microsoft might be a game changer here. The real advantages of the browser application so far are: easy deployment (the killer argument IMHO), "simple" security. I would not be surprised if in the near future, Microsoft advertises a solution for RIA easily deployed, based on standard protocols (HTTP?), a bit like IBM does with Eclipse RIA, but much more ambitious.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Java Is Dead
These days, I have the feeling that Java is dead. Even if, or maybe because I have used Java so much in the past 10 years, I have this feeling.
In 1998 Java was revolutionary. It was a very simple to learn object oriented language with modern concepts and familiar syntax. Furthermore the standard library had neat features like internet networking and it could be integrated in the browser. All this at a time when the internet just started to be popular.
Today we have very few evolutions, a huge library (with lots of useful and useless stuff in). Some good stuff has been added like concurrent utils, but not many things changed overall. Open source languages like Python are much more dynamic in their library maintenance. The language does not seem to provide anything interesting when compared to the alternatives, like .NET or even with the "scripting languages" like Python. In the browser it has failed where Flash has succeeded.
Lots of things are too complicated to build in Java when compared to other languages. I feel Swing, database access (JDBC), JSP could be vastly improved to help developer productivity. Why is ORM less important in the Microsoft world? because the standard database layer of Microsoft is not as crappy as JDBC. Why don't they have tons of web frameworks? because ASP.NET is decent, does more than JSP and does not get too much in your way at the same time. Microsoft finds the right balance between library complexity, power and developer friendlyness.
Browser applications are less popular, and desktop apps integrated to a "3-tier" architecture more popular. Java on the desktop is really weak. Give me .NET or QT anytime. There are still no big Java desktop apps on everyday people desktops except Eclipse (IBM has really done an impressive job with it). It is almost 2009 and I still have no Java app except the dev environment for my Java programmer job on my Linux desktop. I know that in my everyday job, I would be more productive with a .NET environment, just because Java sucks so much on the client side. Borland Delphi was more productive 10 years ago!
Java on the Mobile is a failure. Almost nobody uses it and is plagged with compatibility problems. However there is hope here, with Android from Google.
The only advantage of Java compared to .NET is that it is free. You have Tomcat, Glassfish for free. You can deploy on Linux. If you are a poor developer that's quite an advantage. But most company pay for Java, they want the "security" of an IBM and they deploy on Windows machines. It does not make sense, those companies should buy the better Microsoft stack instead of IBM. And I am sure more and more will. Vista might be the big Microsoft failure, I am sure it will be fixed with Windows 7, and Microsoft dev tools are just getting better and better.
Scala, Groovy, JRuby don't fix anything, they are just toy programming languages and are based on the JVM, on the Java libraries. In the lot, Scala does better because it has the concept of library, and they do try to build more interesting libraries than Sun. But it is too complex to be ever popular.
All the open source libraries in Java are fine but who needs to choose between 20 web frameworks, 5 loggers, etc.. There are very few really useful ones: hibernate, lucene, jmeter, junit.
If Java has no logical place in most companies, if it does not provide anything more than the alternatives, and is very weak on the desktop, what's left to Java? the code base and the developers? That's about it. It sounds a lot like Cobol in the early 90s. Java is dead.
In 1998 Java was revolutionary. It was a very simple to learn object oriented language with modern concepts and familiar syntax. Furthermore the standard library had neat features like internet networking and it could be integrated in the browser. All this at a time when the internet just started to be popular.
Today we have very few evolutions, a huge library (with lots of useful and useless stuff in). Some good stuff has been added like concurrent utils, but not many things changed overall. Open source languages like Python are much more dynamic in their library maintenance. The language does not seem to provide anything interesting when compared to the alternatives, like .NET or even with the "scripting languages" like Python. In the browser it has failed where Flash has succeeded.
Lots of things are too complicated to build in Java when compared to other languages. I feel Swing, database access (JDBC), JSP could be vastly improved to help developer productivity. Why is ORM less important in the Microsoft world? because the standard database layer of Microsoft is not as crappy as JDBC. Why don't they have tons of web frameworks? because ASP.NET is decent, does more than JSP and does not get too much in your way at the same time. Microsoft finds the right balance between library complexity, power and developer friendlyness.
Browser applications are less popular, and desktop apps integrated to a "3-tier" architecture more popular. Java on the desktop is really weak. Give me .NET or QT anytime. There are still no big Java desktop apps on everyday people desktops except Eclipse (IBM has really done an impressive job with it). It is almost 2009 and I still have no Java app except the dev environment for my Java programmer job on my Linux desktop. I know that in my everyday job, I would be more productive with a .NET environment, just because Java sucks so much on the client side. Borland Delphi was more productive 10 years ago!
Java on the Mobile is a failure. Almost nobody uses it and is plagged with compatibility problems. However there is hope here, with Android from Google.
The only advantage of Java compared to .NET is that it is free. You have Tomcat, Glassfish for free. You can deploy on Linux. If you are a poor developer that's quite an advantage. But most company pay for Java, they want the "security" of an IBM and they deploy on Windows machines. It does not make sense, those companies should buy the better Microsoft stack instead of IBM. And I am sure more and more will. Vista might be the big Microsoft failure, I am sure it will be fixed with Windows 7, and Microsoft dev tools are just getting better and better.
Scala, Groovy, JRuby don't fix anything, they are just toy programming languages and are based on the JVM, on the Java libraries. In the lot, Scala does better because it has the concept of library, and they do try to build more interesting libraries than Sun. But it is too complex to be ever popular.
All the open source libraries in Java are fine but who needs to choose between 20 web frameworks, 5 loggers, etc.. There are very few really useful ones: hibernate, lucene, jmeter, junit.
If Java has no logical place in most companies, if it does not provide anything more than the alternatives, and is very weak on the desktop, what's left to Java? the code base and the developers? That's about it. It sounds a lot like Cobol in the early 90s. Java is dead.
Java Is Dead
These days, I have the feeling that Java is dead. Even if, or maybe because I have used Java so much in the past 10 years, I have this feeling.
In 1998 Java was revolutionary. It was a very simple to learn object oriented language with modern concepts and familiar syntax. Furthermore the standard library had neat features like internet networking and it could be integrated in the browser. All this at a time when the internet just started to be popular.
Today we have very few evolutions, a huge library (with lots of useful and useless stuff in). Some good stuff has been added like concurrent utils, but not many things changed overall. Open source languages like Python are much more dynamic in their library maintenance. The language does not seem to provide anything interesting when compared to the alternatives, like .NET or even with the "scripting languages" like Python. In the browser it has failed where Flash has succeeded.
Lots of things are too complicated to build in Java when compared to other languages. I feel Swing, database access (JDBC), JSP could be vastly improved to help developer productivity. Why is ORM less important in the Microsoft world? because the standard database layer of Microsoft is not as crappy as JDBC. Why don't they have tons of web frameworks? because ASP.NET is decent, does more than JSP and does not get too much in your way at the same time. Microsoft finds the right balance between library complexity, power and developer friendlyness.
Browser applications are less popular, and desktop apps integrated to a "3-tier" architecture more popular. Java on the desktop is really weak. Give me .NET or QT anytime. There are still no big Java desktop apps on everyday people desktops except Eclipse (IBM has really done an impressive job with it). It is almost 2009 and I still have no Java app except the dev environment for my Java programmer job on my Linux desktop. I know that in my everyday job, I would be more productive with a .NET environment, just because Java sucks so much on the client side. Borland Delphi was more productive 10 years ago!
Java on the Mobile is a failure. Almost nobody uses it and is plagged with compatibility problems. However there is hope here, with Android from Google.
The only advantage of Java compared to .NET is that it is free. You have Tomcat, Glassfish for free. You can deploy on Linux. If you are a poor developer that's quite an advantage. But most company pay for Java, they want the "security" of an IBM and they deploy on Windows machines. It does not make sense, those companies should buy the better Microsoft stack instead of IBM. And I am sure more and more will. Vista might be the big Microsoft failure, I am sure it will be fixed with Windows 7, and Microsoft dev tools are just getting better and better.
Scala, Groovy, JRuby don't fix anything, they are just toy programming languages and are based on the JVM, on the Java libraries. In the lot, Scala does better because it has the concept of library, and they do try to build more interesting libraries than Sun. But it is too complex to be ever popular.
All the open source libraries in Java are fine but who needs to choose between 20 web frameworks, 5 loggers, etc.. There are very few really useful ones: hibernate, lucene, jmeter, junit.
If Java has no logical place in most companies, if it does not provide anything more than the alternatives, and is very weak on the desktop, what's left to Java? the code base and the developers? That's about it. It sounds a lot like Cobol in the early 90s. Java is dead.
In 1998 Java was revolutionary. It was a very simple to learn object oriented language with modern concepts and familiar syntax. Furthermore the standard library had neat features like internet networking and it could be integrated in the browser. All this at a time when the internet just started to be popular.
Today we have very few evolutions, a huge library (with lots of useful and useless stuff in). Some good stuff has been added like concurrent utils, but not many things changed overall. Open source languages like Python are much more dynamic in their library maintenance. The language does not seem to provide anything interesting when compared to the alternatives, like .NET or even with the "scripting languages" like Python. In the browser it has failed where Flash has succeeded.
Lots of things are too complicated to build in Java when compared to other languages. I feel Swing, database access (JDBC), JSP could be vastly improved to help developer productivity. Why is ORM less important in the Microsoft world? because the standard database layer of Microsoft is not as crappy as JDBC. Why don't they have tons of web frameworks? because ASP.NET is decent, does more than JSP and does not get too much in your way at the same time. Microsoft finds the right balance between library complexity, power and developer friendlyness.
Browser applications are less popular, and desktop apps integrated to a "3-tier" architecture more popular. Java on the desktop is really weak. Give me .NET or QT anytime. There are still no big Java desktop apps on everyday people desktops except Eclipse (IBM has really done an impressive job with it). It is almost 2009 and I still have no Java app except the dev environment for my Java programmer job on my Linux desktop. I know that in my everyday job, I would be more productive with a .NET environment, just because Java sucks so much on the client side. Borland Delphi was more productive 10 years ago!
Java on the Mobile is a failure. Almost nobody uses it and is plagged with compatibility problems. However there is hope here, with Android from Google.
The only advantage of Java compared to .NET is that it is free. You have Tomcat, Glassfish for free. You can deploy on Linux. If you are a poor developer that's quite an advantage. But most company pay for Java, they want the "security" of an IBM and they deploy on Windows machines. It does not make sense, those companies should buy the better Microsoft stack instead of IBM. And I am sure more and more will. Vista might be the big Microsoft failure, I am sure it will be fixed with Windows 7, and Microsoft dev tools are just getting better and better.
Scala, Groovy, JRuby don't fix anything, they are just toy programming languages and are based on the JVM, on the Java libraries. In the lot, Scala does better because it has the concept of library, and they do try to build more interesting libraries than Sun. But it is too complex to be ever popular.
All the open source libraries in Java are fine but who needs to choose between 20 web frameworks, 5 loggers, etc.. There are very few really useful ones: hibernate, lucene, jmeter, junit.
If Java has no logical place in most companies, if it does not provide anything more than the alternatives, and is very weak on the desktop, what's left to Java? the code base and the developers? That's about it. It sounds a lot like Cobol in the early 90s. Java is dead.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Why ArchLinux Is Better Than Ubuntu
It has been now a week since I have installed ArchLinux on my home computer. I daily use Ubuntu 8.10 at work.
Since the Ubuntu upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 I have had problems with my Xorg settings. I just found out the nvidia-settings utility does not manage to save the configuration anymore. So I have to lookup on google and try to fix it. And that annoys me. That annoys me because the promess of Ubuntu is that everything works out of the box. In reality, you have to mess with the configuration as much as with ArchLinux.
There are 2 negative points of ArchLinux when compared to Ubuntu:
- The install on a new computer takes a lot of time (not the 30min of Ubuntu) to have a decent desktop running. It can only be done by people ready to fiddle with config files0. But it is well documented in the Arch wiki. So ArchLinux is definately not newbie oriented.
- Some proprietary software might not be installed easily. For a long time Oracle was not trivial to install. Now there is an AUR file for it, so it is quite simple.
Now the positive side:
- good KDE 4.1.3 available
- more up-to-date packages
- "transparent" updates - no big breaking the system at each release.
- learn to use the useful configuration files. They are not many to use in ArchLinux. One feels much more in control on what's installed and what's happening. They are not many config files to know in the end. Configuration ends up being no more difficult (for someone not addicted to point and click) than in Ubuntu.
- fast boot
- no crap forced upon you, for example PulseAudio. I have less problems with pure ALSA.
- does not disappoint. You know you have to fiddle with the config from the start.
Since the Ubuntu upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 I have had problems with my Xorg settings. I just found out the nvidia-settings utility does not manage to save the configuration anymore. So I have to lookup on google and try to fix it. And that annoys me. That annoys me because the promess of Ubuntu is that everything works out of the box. In reality, you have to mess with the configuration as much as with ArchLinux.
There are 2 negative points of ArchLinux when compared to Ubuntu:
- The install on a new computer takes a lot of time (not the 30min of Ubuntu) to have a decent desktop running. It can only be done by people ready to fiddle with config files0. But it is well documented in the Arch wiki. So ArchLinux is definately not newbie oriented.
- Some proprietary software might not be installed easily. For a long time Oracle was not trivial to install. Now there is an AUR file for it, so it is quite simple.
Now the positive side:
- good KDE 4.1.3 available
- more up-to-date packages
- "transparent" updates - no big breaking the system at each release.
- learn to use the useful configuration files. They are not many to use in ArchLinux. One feels much more in control on what's installed and what's happening. They are not many config files to know in the end. Configuration ends up being no more difficult (for someone not addicted to point and click) than in Ubuntu.
- fast boot
- no crap forced upon you, for example PulseAudio. I have less problems with pure ALSA.
- does not disappoint. You know you have to fiddle with the config from the start.
Why ArchLinux Is Better Than Ubuntu
It has been now a week since I have installed ArchLinux on my home computer. I daily use Ubuntu 8.10 at work.
Since the Ubuntu upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 I have had problems with my Xorg settings. I just found out the nvidia-settings utility does not manage to save the configuration anymore. So I have to lookup on google and try to fix it. And that annoys me. That annoys me because the promess of Ubuntu is that everything works out of the box. In reality, you have to mess with the configuration as much as with ArchLinux.
There are 2 negative points of ArchLinux when compared to Ubuntu:
- The install on a new computer takes a lot of time (not the 30min of Ubuntu) to have a decent desktop running. It can only be done by people ready to fiddle with config files0. But it is well documented in the Arch wiki. So ArchLinux is definately not newbie oriented.
- Some proprietary software might not be installed easily. For a long time Oracle was not trivial to install. Now there is an AUR file for it, so it is quite simple.
Now the positive side:
- good KDE 4.1.3 available
- more up-to-date packages
- "transparent" updates - no big breaking the system at each release.
- learn to use the useful configuration files. They are not many to use in ArchLinux. One feels much more in control on what's installed and what's happening. They are not many config files to know in the end. Configuration ends up being no more difficult (for someone not addicted to point and click) than in Ubuntu.
- fast boot
- no crap forced upon you, for example PulseAudio. I have less problems with pure ALSA.
- does not disappoint. You know you have to fiddle with the config from the start.
Since the Ubuntu upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 I have had problems with my Xorg settings. I just found out the nvidia-settings utility does not manage to save the configuration anymore. So I have to lookup on google and try to fix it. And that annoys me. That annoys me because the promess of Ubuntu is that everything works out of the box. In reality, you have to mess with the configuration as much as with ArchLinux.
There are 2 negative points of ArchLinux when compared to Ubuntu:
- The install on a new computer takes a lot of time (not the 30min of Ubuntu) to have a decent desktop running. It can only be done by people ready to fiddle with config files0. But it is well documented in the Arch wiki. So ArchLinux is definately not newbie oriented.
- Some proprietary software might not be installed easily. For a long time Oracle was not trivial to install. Now there is an AUR file for it, so it is quite simple.
Now the positive side:
- good KDE 4.1.3 available
- more up-to-date packages
- "transparent" updates - no big breaking the system at each release.
- learn to use the useful configuration files. They are not many to use in ArchLinux. One feels much more in control on what's installed and what's happening. They are not many config files to know in the end. Configuration ends up being no more difficult (for someone not addicted to point and click) than in Ubuntu.
- fast boot
- no crap forced upon you, for example PulseAudio. I have less problems with pure ALSA.
- does not disappoint. You know you have to fiddle with the config from the start.
Saturday, November 08, 2008
KDE 4.1.3 (again) on ArchLinux
I tried another silly thing with Linux, ArchLinux. The setup is quite rough as you have to edit many config files manually. But if you know a bit your way around it takes only a few hours to have everything running well. The installation manual on the wiki is detailed enough to correct all eventual mistakes humans do.
I decided to try once more KDE 4 on it, as at first it was just a silly experiment: I was really not sure ArchLinux would be workable. In the end I am pleasantly surprised, KDE 4.1.3 is way way better than any other versions of KDE I have tried before. It is stable and quite pretty. It took the team a lot of time to get there but now I think KDE 4 is a very good window manager, pleasant to use.
It's a big change from older versions which were too unstable/had too few features to be of any use.
I am not convinced with ArchLinux compared to Ubuntu. The setup is much more complex, less packages are available. True you learn a bit more with ArchLinux. We will see if it can keep working well for a few years.
I decided to try once more KDE 4 on it, as at first it was just a silly experiment: I was really not sure ArchLinux would be workable. In the end I am pleasantly surprised, KDE 4.1.3 is way way better than any other versions of KDE I have tried before. It is stable and quite pretty. It took the team a lot of time to get there but now I think KDE 4 is a very good window manager, pleasant to use.
It's a big change from older versions which were too unstable/had too few features to be of any use.
I am not convinced with ArchLinux compared to Ubuntu. The setup is much more complex, less packages are available. True you learn a bit more with ArchLinux. We will see if it can keep working well for a few years.
KDE 4.1.3 (again) on ArchLinux
I tried another silly thing with Linux, ArchLinux. The setup is quite rough as you have to edit many config files manually. But if you know a bit your way around it takes only a few hours to have everything running well. The installation manual on the wiki is detailed enough to correct all eventual mistakes humans do.
I decided to try once more KDE 4 on it, as at first it was just a silly experiment: I was really not sure ArchLinux would be workable. In the end I am pleasantly surprised, KDE 4.1.3 is way way better than any other versions of KDE I have tried before. It is stable and quite pretty. It took the team a lot of time to get there but now I think KDE 4 is a very good window manager, pleasant to use.
It's a big change from older versions which were too unstable/had too few features to be of any use.
I am not convinced with ArchLinux compared to Ubuntu. The setup is much more complex, less packages are available. True you learn a bit more with ArchLinux. We will see if it can keep working well for a few years.
I decided to try once more KDE 4 on it, as at first it was just a silly experiment: I was really not sure ArchLinux would be workable. In the end I am pleasantly surprised, KDE 4.1.3 is way way better than any other versions of KDE I have tried before. It is stable and quite pretty. It took the team a lot of time to get there but now I think KDE 4 is a very good window manager, pleasant to use.
It's a big change from older versions which were too unstable/had too few features to be of any use.
I am not convinced with ArchLinux compared to Ubuntu. The setup is much more complex, less packages are available. True you learn a bit more with ArchLinux. We will see if it can keep working well for a few years.
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