Changing course with open source

They sure have difference of opinion. Open source has been "evil" for Microsoft. Then they acknowledged that it was a problem for them. Now Steve Ballmer is on record saying :

"Innovation is not something that is easy to do in the kind of distributed environment that the open-source/Linux world works in...our customers have seen a lot more innovation from us than they have seen from that community."

On the other hand, Sun Microsystems seems to have learnt few lessons. Paul Andrews informs that Sun and Oracle have thrown "their collective weight behind the inexpensive x86-based (Intel chip and clone) servers running Linux or Sun's Unix-based Solaris". He further quips:

"Sun wants first of all to make sure it loses none of its well-heeled clients to IBM, a big Linux supporter, or to Dell Computer servers running the hated Microsoft Windows. Second, the alliance would like to lure as many Windows-based businesses to a Sun-Oracle solution as possible."

The alliance indeed seems formidable.

Since I too have jumped onto the "blogging" bandwagon, ought to take some lessons on writing a blog. Found some good pointers here. The site counsels: Great writing cannot be taught, but bad writing can be avoided.

Changing, for better

Bruce Eckel says that the Java team is clearly not ignoring the threat of C# as Microsoft ignored Linux and open source for so long. Joshua Bloch, a Senior Architect at Sun Microsystems, told him in an interview that

"along with the new features already on the list for "Tiger" (JDK 1.5), including true enumerations, autoboxing, and generics (templates), they are adding attributes, something (along with autoboxing) taken directly from C#, because it's a good idea."

I feel good about it! BTW, Josh also said that JDK1.5 would probably be the last big change to Java after JDK1.2 which saw the arrival of Swing and new Collections API.

Sun: Empathising Programmers?

My tete-a-tete with EJB was not pleasant. Though involved in server-side development I have never been into developing full-fledged J2EE applications using EJB. Despite of joining a crash course it scares me. Many fellow java developers would perhaps agree: conceptually, EJB seems tuff. It seems Sun Microsystems has now awoken to the fact as well.

Sun's efforts to augment the number of Java developers from the existing 3 million today to 10 million will emphasize on "easier development". Rich Green, vice president of tools at Sun says:

"..we'll focus on enhancements to the Java platform that cater to simpler development paradigms..Ease of development is a theme at all levels, not just tools, but APIs, platform definitions, etc. are all trending to support this notion in a more focused sense...you would agree that there (are) millions of folks out there who are not necessarily creating J2EE-scalable applications. They're creating lightweight applications. That's a group of individuals that have been slower to come to the Java platform than others..."

Better late than never!

WiKi: A Social Software

Wiki have been around since 1995 but have attracted increased interest recently, perhaps owing to the new-found interest in social software. Frankly it's a new term for me but it feels good to know about web sites written entirely by its users (a Groupware?). Yes, that means -- open editing, anyone can edit the site contents (even delete material). That lets me wonder on the version controlling the site moderators need to perform, enormous. Wiki does not invlove fancy graphis, layout, it's pure simple HTML. This makes me wonder too: when blogs of today are getting more and more colorful and flashy what drives people towards a non WYSIWYG medium again.

BTW, Wiki Wiki is Hawaiian for "Quick."

Re-inventing the wheel!

Recently been to the Velocity page. Velocity is a Java-based templates engine designed to work hand-in-hand with Apache Struts and servlets said to make it easier to customize Web sites. Like Velocity, there are scores of projects at jakarta.org many of which claim to be offshoots or improvements on existing ones. Nothing bad about that!

But I wonder if it's always worthwhile to start a new project just to improve upon an existing one. Why not reform the existing one itself? Velocity for one..claims to be provide a "viable" alterative for JSP itself. Noel J. Bergman very strongly and justfiably echoes my opinion:

The Velocity documentation states that "the Velocity Template Language (VTL) is meant to provide the easiest, simplest, and cleanest way to incorporate dynamic content in a Web page. Even a Web page developer with little or no programming experience should soon be capable of using VTL to incorporate dynamic content in a Web site." In other words, Velocity doesn't remove programming from presentation; rather it requires users to learn a new ad hoc scripting language. By requiring Web page designers to learn the Velocity Template Language, Velocity fails to eliminate the mingling of the content and presentation. Velocity is just one example among a number of template engines on the market, but most of them, like Velocity, require some degree of programming skill on the front end.