What Do They Put In the Java?

First, go over to Ted Neward's blog and read this. And read the comments too.

Now, I've put my response to Kirk's latest rant here because Ted's comment system is totally whacked. One big blob of text. Yuck. So...

David, I think you've hit the nail on the head when you admitted to having drank the Microsoft purple kool-aid. This show would not bother you 'cos brother Carl is preaching to the converted.

Dude, I drank the Kool-aid. I didn't sell my soul. Carl's heavy; but he ain't my brother.

Carl's attitude didn't wash. I'm not sure which comment you're talking about when you say that the Java community hasn't faced the problem yet? Which problem is that? The fact that Spring doesn't appear to handle a double dispatch? I agree it's an issue but don't mistake that for a critisum.

What the? As I understand the community process, somebody somewhere has a problem. That person writes code to fix the problem and shares it with the community that, writes their own version of it. Kidding aside, that particular problem domain has now surfaced within the community and then at some point it's everywhere. When I say they haven't faced the problem yet, I don't mean that they're all in denial; I simply mean, as does Ted, I think, that the community isn't even aware that there is a problem! Maybe it's not ever going to be a problem in the Java world because the way things work is different. Ted even said that he wouldn't even have known about it if it wasn't for some conversations he's had in the past about COM with guys like Box.

This is where there is a huge cultural difference between the camps. The Java community is willing to discuss it's warts and uglyness out in public. That my friend, is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength.

Who said anything about weakness? The fact that you guys don't waste your time solving problems that don't really exist in your world is a strength! And you don't think that Microsoft's warts are public? Every hacker wannabe and script kiddie on the planet is trying to hack everything that Microsoft ever made. And when they succeed, it doesn't get more public. Who's hacking Spring? Nobody.

I don't disagree that the question wasn't a valid one, it was. What I question is why was it the only real question asked about Spring during the entire discussion?

Maybe because nobody cares about a JAF? (Just Another Framework - and here I thought I was clever but somebody even made one with that name....) I don't want to watch the Care Bears. I want to see a cage match and I don't care who's fighting. Hell, bring in the Spring guy and the Struts guy and let them go at it. Add in the Cocoon and WebWork boys and make it a Battle Royal. Bring in the DotNetNuke guy, the Rainbow guy, and the folks from GMP to fill out the card. Then bring in the original IBuySpy team and have a grudge match! I don't care!

Why did the show appear to be bashing someone who was trying to help .NET advance?

I'm not sure that Mark's motivation was to help .NET advance and I'm not sure they were "bashing" the guy. I certainly didn't get that feeling. I think he wanted to give us some insight into the Spring framework. I think he wanted to promote the Spring framework. Let us not imagine altruistic motivations where none are likely to exist.

If the hosts were so intereted in helping, they could have 1) done some research real research so that they could ask useful questions.

Well, there's only one host and that's Carl. I doubt that Carl, intelligent as he is, has the bandwidth to get up to speed enough to have an insightful conversation on the subject. I suspect that's why our friend Ted was invited along; and Ted's a guy that probably doesn't need to do any homework on the subject to have an enlightened conversation.

2) asked questions to help .NET people understand how this framework might help them.

Look, if I need to learn how to build better applications then I would much rather read Effective Enterprise Java by Neward than listen to someone drone on about how their J.A.F. is better than some other J.A.F. Ted gets rave reviews from guys like Rockford Lhotka. Now there's a guy who's drank a lot of Kool-aid. Good practice transcends language. We just use a language for implementation. Monkeys will be doing that part for us soon.

What are you paying for plugs these days Ted? :)

3) start the discussion of the warts in a more positive manner rather than just blind-siding Mark. It is a good thing that Ted was asked to participate on that show because other than that.... it would have been a bust! We can say thank you Ted for making the show interesting!

Blind-sided?!? WTF? Like I said in my previous comment, I'm not sure if Mark was having a bad day or what, but a ceramic soap dish has more charisma than he displayed that evening. Where was Mark's passion? Don't blame Carl. And so what if Spring doesn't do double-dispatch? Certainly not me. I doubt anybody else does either.

And BTW, where the hell was that sell-out Rory anyways?

Dave
Just because I can...

posted on Tuesday, January 18, 2005 7:52 PM

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# re: What Do They Put In the Java? 1/27/2005 2:27 AM Choy

I listened to the show live. I spoke to Mark the day after the show. In his defense, he told me that it was unusually difficult to do the show from his cell phone. He blasted the volume and pushed the receiver to his ear to no avail. It was tough to keep up with what was going on.

He's a brilliant and passionate guy. He even prepared lots of notes on Spring.NET, Java and .NET. But the show went all over the place. AOP, ORM, communities, choices, web frameworks. Just when he'd catch up, they'd change topics again. Occasionally he'd get lucky and someone would ask him a direct question and he could ask them to repeat it.

# re: What Do They Put In the Java? 1/27/2005 6:05 AM David Totzke

Choy:
Thanks for taking the time to add that. I figured there must be some explanation for the way he always sounded a little flustered. --dave

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