Announcing the Java Spring Programming IDE Challenge

[dav0]

Help promote your favorite Java Spring Programming IDE by taking part in the Java Spring Programming IDE Challenge which is taking place on JavaPocket.net.

The resulting contest entries will be used to help teach Java Spring Programming. See JavaPocket.net for more details.

[dav0]

In case you don't have time to partake in the programming challenge right now, at least come take a really short - single page - survey on JavaPocket.net to help us figure out which Java Programming IDE best lends itself to learning Java Spring. Thanks!

[springmvcsucks]

I went to the programming on the web reading sections at both stores.

A.

At fry's, the shelf labled "Java" had not one book about Java... Or Spring... Or Hibernate... or Struts... or EJB... or Applets ... or anything remotely related to Java(not even scala or grails or anything like that. NOTHING). There were plenty of Javascript books on that shelf however. Close to that particular bookshelf were a ton of ASP.NET, C#, Rails, Python, and Ruby books. Each with their own shelf label(Rails under Ruby of course). I thought it was a mistake. Go visit the Woodland Hills frys and look for yourself. Ask an associate for a Java book.

B.

At Barnes and Nobles, I saw one Grails book in the web programming section. It was on the shelf closest to the floor. Again, ASP.NET, C#, Rails, Python, and Ruby books dominated the scene. This was the Sunset and Vine location in Los Angeles. I asked where all the Java books were. This location didn't carry that many because people don't buy the (Java)books and publishers don't write books for them.

Why in the world would someone want to learn any of the unproductive J2EE stacks in any IDE? They are all unproductive. Only maintenance for legacy J2EE apps is relevant anymore. The world has moved on. Let the J2EE dead horse turn into gasoline/fossil fuel for future generations. Just burn it all.

[dav0]

Ha! Good stuff! You're writing from Los Angeles eh? Halleluja! I spent nearly a year there in 1980-81 and still have some fond memories!

On the subject of Java books in book stores, I have purchased more Java books than will fit in my house anymore! Now I purchase Spring books with equal vigor, but I can't get them fast enough from local yokel books stores, so I buy them online and/or direct from the publisher and have them delivered. I also subscribe to Safari online books, so I rarely buy actual "fossil fuel" books anymore anyway.

That said, I think you do have a point because it used to be that the Java books took up several large sections at most bookstores, whereas now you are lucky to find very many books on Java.

I guess it is a sort of phenomenon that happens in the real world. You rarely ever see a book on Cobol anymore either, but you'd be surprised how many people still make a living writing Cobol programs! Of course, there will always be a dot Net type of language around for Microsoft die-hards too, but until C# decides to make inroads onto other platforms, it will always be limited to a slowly dying platform (Windows).

Chances are, the next programming language wave is coming and will make a huge splash soon, and when it does, you will once again see the bookshelves filled with books on the new language craze. My bet is that it will be Scala, but I am only basing this on what I am hearing about the language, and not on personal experience. Regardless of whether it becomes the new killer programming language or not, I do eventually plan to buy a Scala book, so that's the kind of programming language book that belongs on my local bookstore shelf to tempt me with!

In the meantime, I wouldn't be writing any obituaries on the Java language any time soon (unless you are a comedy writer).

-dav0 (happily employed writing Java programs for over 12 years now with no end it sight).

[springmvcsucks]

Hee hee. Java the new Cobol is quite appropriate hahahaha. But seriously, the age of Java is over. Sun selling out.. Spring selling out.. This doesn't help Java/J2EE as a technology stack at all. If you see the history of acquisitions of technology by bigger companies, you'll see a pattern of DEATH of an acquired product. Very few people try to do new development in J2EE these days. You may be making a living doing J2ee, but in reality, you are the underwhelming minority. Heck.. the whitehouse just went with Drupal for whitehouse.gov over any Java solution (funny thing about this lack of GOOD Java CMS's. If it was so great to develop one in java, we'd see more that can kick the asses of php ones, but that hasn't happened). Laugh it off as comedy if you wish, but truthfully, Java/J2EE is a dinosaur.

[dav0]

I would agree that PHP apps are still quite widespread as a result of the pleathora of extremely cheap LAMP web sites on the internet. LAMP based web sites, as you undoubtedly know, owe their ubiquitous success to the larger success of open source Linux, which is the "L" in the LAMP acronym (the other letters being Apache as the Web server, MySQL as the relational database management system and PHP (as well as Perl and Python - all conveniently starting with the letter "P").

Part of the reason for this is because Java was simply never bundled very well with these LAMP distributions in the past, many of which are configured with CPanel, with an assortment of "P" based web site management applications all cobbled around the various tiers of the CPanel business layers (from web site management, to domain name reseller, to VPS manager, etc.), all of which make running an older retro web v1.0 site relatively easy.

For many people, it is apparently enough to run a simple web site and maybe throw in a few "P" based web site gadgets here and there (many of which have security holes wide enough to drive a truck through and this makes them very popular among web site crackers as well).

Many of the people who contribute to the "A" in LAMP (Apache web server) now work for SpringSource (now a division of VMWare), and of course you realize that the "M" in LAMP (MySQL) on which many of the "P" based applications are all based now belongs to Sun Microsystems (soon to become Oracle or whatever). So yes, things are being sold out (or "Cobolized"), but this also includes much of what LAMP and the "P" based languages are all based on as well.

Keep in mind that Java has only actually been open sourced for a couple of years now, and for one reason or another (politics mostly) it is only now approaching a point where it can potentially become completely integrated into anything approaching the LAMP stack in terms of being an integrated component of a larger system - hinged on the success of Java v7 most likely.

So it's really not accurate to classify Java as a dinosaur. If anything, the dinosaurs are the "P" based languages which have, up until very recently, been the only viable web language options on Linux. Meanwhile, Java and the army of JVM based languages and toolkits which accompany it (Spring, etc.) are just now finally becoming poised to replace the LAMP stack on their way to internet unbiquity for the foreseeable future. This assumes that the JVM language crowd can retain their open source qualities enough to avoid vendor lock-out - which would simply spawn a whole new open source revolution in some other form most likely.