Simon Morris's Blog: September 2006 Archive

There was an interesting exchange on the recent Java Posse pod cast about the Java Kernel project, and how important size is to the JRE download. (Hmm, that's the second JP plug in as many months -- I wonder if I qualify for a Posse t-shirt or something? :) They referenced Robert Cooper's thought provoking blog which compares download sizes for various products, thus:

JRE 1.5.0 Windows offline installation:   16.00 MB
Adobe Acrobat 7.0.8:                      27.7 MB
Real Player 10.5:                         13.5 MB
.NET 1.1:                                 23.1 MB

This got me thinking: is the problem more to do with Psychology than actual byte size?

In shops, products are regularly sold at a penny under the pound (dollar/whatever.) We get an awkward 19.99 rather than a nice round 20, because the discounted penny has some kind of strange mental trickery: we see only the 19 pounds and somehow subconsciously consider the product cheap(er).

Java Episode VI : The Fanboy Menace

Posted by javakiddy on September 12, 2006 at 09:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

There's been a lot of discussion lately about the Java language: were the Java 5 features a mistake, will the features being suggested for 7 be worth it? One aspect of this debate is a kind of 'feature envy', in which pressure mounts to support a feature or particular mode of working because a rival language supports it. It seems that increasingly we live in a world where languages are not seen as merely tools addressing specific problems, but flags around which communities rally to practice their own peculiar brand of fanboy devotion.

Time was when each language did a different job. Working with a lot with numbers? Fortran may well be your thing. Want to write a company payroll? COBOL is where you should look. Want something quick, easy, and beginner friendly? Let me point you in the direction of BASIC. (Big fan of Jedi Master Yoda? Then try, you must, Forth!)

The COBOL folks never fretted that their language didn't have the mathematical dexterity of Fortran. The BASIC folks didn't spend sleepless nights wondering when they'd be able to define record field formats. And nobody seriously wondered whether they should adopt Object Orientation. Each language was a tool, with its own focus, strengths and weaknesses -- you learnt as many as necessary for the type of work you did and picked the right one for the job at hand.

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