Dru Devore's Blog

Where is development with Java going?

Technologies have come and gone over time. Is the latest round of technologies getting the hype worth integrating into a Java system? I am interested in hearing the feedback of the Java community about the latest and greatest technologies.

Reciently I found myself looking for work. Being a Java guy I was searching for positions for a Java person. During this search I found many different positions with other languages listed right along with Java. Some of the positions I considered to a HR person posting a position without knowing what they were actually looking for, or what they can get. Like someone with 8 years of .net, 10 years of Java, 10 years of VB, 4 years of PHP, 6 years of Struts, 9 years of J2EE. There are also posts which were reasonable and have the new tech in it like PHP, AJAX, and Ruby on Rails. What I would like to ask the Java community is; are these technologies actually used in the real world with Java and if so how?

Are these other technologies something that the Java community should embrace? I have never thought that there was one solution or a generic correct solution for all situations but is integrating these with Java the way we need to be moving?

Comments

• The Java community should not embrace these other technologies. They have their own communities. A Java programmer can choose to leave the Java community and join one of these other communities.

  I doubt any real world projects are using PHP, or Ruby on Rails with Java in an intimate way (anything other than invoking a URL from one language to another). AJAX is a completely different matter where strong Java toolkits do exist.

  In a sense integrating Java with these other language is already possible through JNI, CORBA or Web Services. JSR 223 provides a mechanism to execute foreign language scripts from within a Java process.

  Are these not sufficient?

  Posted by: weiqigao on July 16, 2006 at 05:37 PM

• 
  Hey Dru :) i think the future trend in software/systems integration is to integrate via webservices. In an ideal employer, all systems are in Java ;) or otherwise accessible via webservices :)

  but usually its some concoction or languages, innit. Of shell scripts, perl, python, ruby, PHP, VB, C#, Java, and maybe even some COBOL thrown in there for good measure! And jobs seem to be advertised listing all the languages that an enterprise has (legacy) systems written in. Whereas, i don't think it is reasonable to expect a Java programmer (or C# programmer, or python programmer) to be constantly switching between different programming languages every day!

  And how to integrate older systems not supporting webservices? Using JDBC/databases as a messaging/integration platform is quite underrated if you ask me ;)
  

  Posted by: evanx on July 17, 2006 at 05:23 AM

• Javascript is the new Java.
  Recently Javascript has started making the jump from the web browser to the desktop, via Widgets (Gadgets if you are Microsoft because they have to do everything differently. Who do they think they are? Apple? ;-)
  Many web frameworks try to avoid doing any Javascript, either moving all that stuff up onto the server (e.g. server side validation, Ajax), or autogenerating Javascript for you. But they are not completely there yet. time and time again I've seen Java 'purists' struggle to keep from having to write Javascript in their web app, but the customer eventually throws them a curve ball they can't deal with unless they dirty their hands with the Javascript.
  Project Simplice is also interesting, bringing VB onto the JVM... who knows what effect that will have? (My prediction: yet another amazing technology which Sun will completely fumble the marketing of with a net effect of practically nil).
  Webservices in EE 5 are very exciting. They are dead easy. So much pain removed - it is incredible. So we may see people running around with the Webservice hammer banging on everything they can. Presumably this will make the SOA people happy(ier).
  Matisse makes building a GUI fun and fast.
  One of the common themes with these is that although they might not lessen the amount of XML in modern Java development, it is being moved into the background and/or hidden. I think this is a very good thing. Doing logic in XML is horrible, and trying to do programming in XML you start by throwing out the advantage of the compiler and most kinds of autocompletion in the IDE.
  So the upsurge of XML (with things like Struts and Hibernate) was like throwing out 20 years of tools development and going back to the stone age of programming. I worked on 'Java' projects where the XML outweighed the Java 2:1, and you would spend 80-90% of your time twiddling the XML - very frustrating. Now that the tools have gotten on top of the XML and made it manageable I think the power is back in the hands of the programmers.
  So EE 5 is a revolution of sorts. And it is a good thing. I think that if Java had continued the way it was going (getting buried under mountains of XML) then for many people it would not have been a matter of embracing those other technologies so much as abandoning ship entirely and switching languages.
  Returning to the Javascript theme... Javascript, CSS and HTML are the 'triumvirate' of good looking responsive client apps at the moment. Their main advantage is that you can transition from the web to the desktop and back again without having to learn another bunch of languages (of course if doing a web app you will need to do CGI somehow). If Java loses the desktop it will be to Javascript/CSS.
  Of course there are a great many ugly ugly sites where the CSS sucks, just as there are ugly VB apps and ugly Java apps. And there are beautiful CSS apps and Java apps. A good craftsman does not blame the tools.

  Posted by: rickcarson on July 17, 2006 at 04:54 PM

• I was expecting a few more comments than what I got to this one but I am sure this will do.
  First for my comments on where it is all going.
  From what I have seen reciently I don't think that we the Java community should not shun new tech if we did then Java would stagnate. Lets use an example a friend of mine pointed out to me last night. Java was created as a client technology and if the community didn't look forward it would still be a client technology and be all but dead now. For that reason I feel like we need to work happily with other technologies. There is no one solution to a problem and combining technologies is a good sometimes a good solution. For the combination of Java with PHP I don't think it is the right solution for a single page but there are situations where adding a php page to a Java site solves a problem easily, take a look at the NetBeans download page.
  Now for my comments on the comments
  -weiqigao- I am not suggesting that we go move our efforts to the other communities but we should possibly utilize the other technologies when it is a good solution.
  -evanx- I like your comments, thank you. I have been doing Web Services for around a year now and love them. I find them easy to use and with some of the changes in Java 5 it will become even easier. I am really looking forward to using Java 5 with Web Services. Like I said before though there are some things which can be a good solution and create a great system. Most of these things are on the client side usually in a browser. Like the AXIS being used to populate a search list as the user is typing or using PHP for a quick download page.
  -rickcarson- Great comments and I can't really add anything to it besides I agree. Thank You.

  Posted by: ddevore on July 21, 2006 at 09:49 AM

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