Less is better. I agree with every single point. Chasing C# and Ruby with rushed out features that don’t fit the essence of Java the language is not doing us any favors. Developers who need better languages are already one-foot out the door, towards languages that are better designed for their needs. Java just needs to focus on doing what Java does best …
C2EE. Rudolf Olah: “I didn’t realize it was a joke till the end. The EJB and off-shoring were the tip-offs.
Raganwald: “It’s a joke. Right?”
Sort of. It’s tongue-in-cheek criticism on the people who think Java is the one true programming language, that it doesn’t get any better than this, and of course, The Cult of the JVM.
But there’s truth behind it. Java is the better COBOL, that is its competitive advantage, and the sooner Java comes to embrace its role in the world, the better it will serve us all. It’s not glamorous, but like the electricity grid and water supply, it serves a purpose.
Unfortunately Java is Sun — or Sun is Java, either way, there’s a strong ego play that doesn’t believe languages have a purpose, and will rather let it die the death of a million features. COBOL has some big shoes to fit, and I’d rather see Java go there than cede to C#.
It cuts both ways. Nathan Weizenbaum, What I Learned From Java That Makes Me a Better Programmer When I Use Ruby.
DIS. Adding to my wishlist for 2008:
#3 Distributed issue tracking. Maintains all the issues in the source code repository, so you can review issues for a particular version/tag/branch, work on issues in separate branches, and edit issues locally, synchronizing them as part of a changeset.
Coupled with distributed version and documentation generated from source, it’s a killer development workflow.
WICD/CDF. Also on the wishlist:
#4 HTML documents. If HTML can do it, there’s no need for binary proprietary formats like ODF and OpenXML. Except it can’t, not without a lot of other supporting documents (images, styling, etc), so a compound document format is necessary. And while we’re at it, fixing print media in the browser means high quality printouts straight from the Web.
PDF is good, but less of PDF is even better.
Above, another find image from Scary Ideas (via ffffound!)