I don't usually blog about the same thing two days in a row, but Joshua Marinacci's Java Sketchbook: Getting Started with Java Web Start article has generated a remarkable number of talkbacks in a single day (26 at last count). And aside from a small amount of flameage on a thread about security, most of it hits on substantial concerns people have with what Web Start does and what it could or should do.

I think deployment is a real pain point in Java SE development, perhaps even a bigger issue than the endlessly debated visual fidelity of AWT vs. Swing vs. SWT. It's hard to see how users are going to get bent out of shape over an application "just not looking right" when it's absurdly impractical to launch the app in the first place, or when that situation makes developers take their platform-independent Java code and place it in a single-platform application launcher.

Java Web Start is one answer to some of these problems (and Joshua's part two will go into further depth on JWS), but there are others. You can turn to double-clickable JARs, native bundlers, shell scripts / batch files and more, depending on your needs... and your needs may not be well served by any of these approaches. Indeed, few of those options address broader deployment issues, like versioning, updating, and document association (some of which are being addressed by efforts like JDIC).

I think you could write a book on Java deployment issues. Maybe if Joshy would take the hint -- :-) -- he will...