Craig Castelaz's Blog

Development Tug-o-War

Sun wants to dramatically increase the number of Java developers with Rave. They believe a significant portion of this increase will be accomplished by broadening the audience rather than converting existing developers. Many of these new faces will be end-users, or domain-experts. Rave promises to introduce a significant number of non-traditional programmers to the ranks of Java developers.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Amateur and professional developers tend to inhabit different areas of the programming spectrum. Each group experiences development from different perspectives and responsibilities. There is little overlap between them. Yet, there is tension between the groups. Wizard-enabled amateurs create applications quickly and easily, and wonder why the professionals are sooooo slooooow, and always act like they're overburdened. The professionals, on the other hand, roll their eyes and sigh as they attempt to scale a quick-and-dirty application, or pick up the pieces of a brittle one-off turned mission critical.

Rave will not be alone in helping to foster this tug-o-war, there are currently plenty of tools that allow the two groups to clash. Nor, is it like the tug-o-war is a recent phenomenon. The roots of the tension can be traced back to early spreadsheets like VisiCalc, and can be found in the old engineers vs. hobbyists debate surrounding Turbo Pascal.

There are interesting days ahead for Java, and it isn't just in terms of technology.

Comments

• Thank goodness for hobbyists.
  After all, engineers are made, not born. I have an English degree, of all things. If it hadn't been for Java's approachability and dare I say ease-of-use, I might never have discovered a passion for engineering. Now I'm five months away from a master's of software engineering. Humans are natural builders, regardless of vocation or background. The easier it is to become productive with Java, the better off the Java community is. And if it turns hobbyists into engineers, so much the better.

  Posted by: zathomas on July 10, 2003 at 04:03 PM

• No winner
  This tug-o-war cannot have a winner. What I think happens most often is that the rope breaks: you have a group of wizard-"lovers" and a group of code-"geeks", which don't exactly love each other I can say...

  Which group is "better" depends, as all things, on the requirements: you need something fast? Wizards are the way to go, if they can do it. You need something tricky? The "geeks" can deliver.

  Now, if Rave will be able to accommodate both groups, it will be a winner for Sun. But my experience with Java and Java-ide's tells me that's not an easy task. Java wants you to use the keyboard more than the mouse to really give you things.

  It really all depends on how magical wizards the "geeks" at Sun will write for the "wizards" ;-)

  Posted by: vgiannadakis on July 11, 2003 at 03:16 AM

• I am worried
  This might work out. Or it might end up giving the Java community a massive identity crisis. Trying to be all things to all people could end in chaos. Why not just let the Amateurs use VB and the professionals use Java? Every language has its niche - it should focus on that niche....

  Posted by: c_armstrong on July 13, 2003 at 11:33 AM

• Don't forget the desktop...
  If we're serious about moving heavily into the desktop then we have to address the hobbyists and end-users. At the moment people knock up quick and dirty apps on the desktop in VB, it ties them closely both to the OS and to the Microsoft's development tools and languages. If Rave can make creating those same hacks in Java easy, as well as making them portable, then we have a chance of weaning people away from VB.

  Posted by: pan on July 14, 2003 at 03:32 AM

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