Meaning of Interface21?

[Arthur Loder]

Spring history question: what is the meaning of the name Interface21? I know that the original pre-Spring codebase was named Interface21, but why was the framework named this in the first place?

Thanks!

-Arthur Loder

[tatvamasi]

Only Rod can answer that. I could make a practical guess, original spring started out with 21 interfaces. and implementation got bigger over the period. All I remember reading once, Rod started out with a small framework for the place he was working at and after that he realized how nice it was and how big a room it has to evolve to a full blown j2ee framework. I am not sure if idea came from Brad Appleton's Pizza Inversion.

[Andreas Senft]

First: I do not know.
That said, I would also like to make a guess

I think the code base had been packaged using Rod's company name (which is named Interface21). As far as I recall the framework was just code accompanying his book and was afaik never referred to by a specific name.

As of the name itself I would guess that it might mean something like "interface to the 21st century" or so. Just an idea, though.

Maybe Rod can enlighten us.

Just my 2cents,
Andreas

[Rod Johnson]

Andreas is close. I actually registered the domain name in 1998. (Interface21 was founded in its present form in 2004.)

Interface was a play on the OO concept (and my love of it) and the notion of an interface to a system--at that point in time I was involved in web-enabling legacy systems.

Yes, 21 stands for 21st century, as in 20th Century Fox. I believe now they're just Fox, so we may need to drop the 21 in 2099. :-)

[Andreas Senft]

so we may need to drop the 21 in 2099. :-)

...and don't forget to reserve the interface22 domain betimes, just in case

Regards,
Andreas

[ge0ffrey]

I always figured that interface21 was to avoid catch22 chicken-and-egg initialization problems.