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The world of ferret hunters is really thriving lately. Sort of
Posted by kirillcool on February 20, 2006 at 01:56 AM | Comments (23)
Every time i read one of Bruce Tate interviews (the latest one is right here), i can't help but think that the ferret-hunters think that everybody else is hunting ferrets. I guess that's how the world looks like when you run a consultancy shop for mom'n'dad joints that can't afford their own ferret hunters. I mean, you have a shop that sells ferret-hunting equipment and a guy walks in. Chances are, he'll ask for the latest in ferret-hunting, right?
Now, you know that there are other animals out there, and you have even spent a few years on a big ranch full of them. But the "man" didn't let you hunt other animals, he just gave you this big bazooka and told you to take those ferrets down. It took you four months to read the bazooka manual, to setup the launch pad and figure out that if you aim too close the ferrets just disintegrate and if you aim too far they just get brushed. Your friend hooks you up with a ferret-trap and in four days you have more ferrets than you have in your entire life. You then start writing a book.
This book is full of examples. Every time you need an example from the hunting world, you randomly pick up an animal. Randomly, each time it's a ferret. After a few such picks, your readers are really intrigued - perhaps there are no other animals around? You seem to be so sure of that (at least it doesn't hurt the book sales too much). The random selection can't be wrong after all. You then present a wonderful choice of these great ferret-hunting tools and say that all the hunter enthusiasts are already using them to hunt ferrets all over the world. I guess they are, since the ferret-hunting frameworks are springing all over the place. All other animals must seem extinct by now. Somehow it is implied that these enthusiasts are hunting other animals with these tools too. Oh no, wait - there are no other animals around, haven't i said it already?
A few months back Greg had took the words out of my mouth with his review of ferret-hunting beyondness. Now even Hani joins in against the ferret-hunting consultancy shops.
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Comments
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When you're a ferret hunter:Your job is to convince people that ferrets are the only thing worth having; and furthermore, to regard with disdain the many animals you can't catch.
Posted by: cajo on February 20, 2006 at 06:14 AM
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You mean bazookas may not really be the best tool for ferret hunting? Weird.
Let me guess how the story goes on: people with money sunk in the bazookas-for-professional-enterprising-ferret-hunters industry will do their best to badmouth those pesky, bazooka-revenue-threatening ferret trap industry upstarts. Right? :)
cheers,
dalibor topic
Posted by: robilad on February 20, 2006 at 09:19 AM
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Dalibor,
Nowadays, hardly anyone seriously proposes bazooka 2.0 as a viable alternative to hunt ferrets. They say that bazooka 3.0 is a much lighter tool to operate, but that remains to be seen. It's just that the ferret-trap spin doctors try to pose their 1-inch traps as a solution to catching lions and bears. No - wait, there are no other animals besides ferrets :)
Posted by: kirillcool on February 20, 2006 at 01:46 PM
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ah yes, our weekly dose of Java stinks thinking. How could we live without it? This one does have the virtue of remarking about how the JCP stinks as well. Got to keep the stinkiness fresh.
leouser
Posted by: leouser on February 20, 2006 at 02:05 PM
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Fortunately, the ferret-trappers are in for a surprise when they approach bears in ferret traps, so the problem will darwinistically solve itself. ;)
cheers,
dalibor topic
Posted by: robilad on February 20, 2006 at 03:37 PM
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leouser: the JCP has some pretty severe defects, that are going unfixed for two years now. That's not a secret to developers involved in the actual implementation of JCP-driven 'open' standards. I'd love to get my hands on an up to date version of the JVM spec, for example, that describes the JVM from 1.6, but no such thing exists anywhere, afaict. The JVM spec hasn't been published in an up-to-date version since 1999, actually.
If the core specification for Java, the JVM spec, is in such out-of-date state, then something is clearly going wrong with the JCP. It's supposed to prevent the non-standard extensions from happening, that we've seen with the Sun JVM since 1999, but it's unfortunately not working at all.
cheers,
dalibor topic
Posted by: robilad on February 20, 2006 at 04:05 PM
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hmmm... the link Ive found for a JVM and 1.5 is:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/vmspec/2nd-edition/jvms-java5.html
Looks like it has links to changes and such.
leouser
Posted by: leouser on February 20, 2006 at 05:36 PM
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sure, if you are desprate enough to google around you can find documents about some of the changes (and the link you gave does not document any of the changes to the verification that are supposed to happen with 1.6, for example). There is no actual specification that describes the JVM as it is today exists: there is an outdated spec from the last century, with at least 5 of its 9 chapters requiring updates for 1.6, and there are some PDFs on some more or less hidden pages, which don't actually describe the latest developments.
Of course, it's still better than nothing, and for 6 long years there was a big fat nothing in terms of JVM spec updates until I, personally, started to make a fuss about it and use the fact to point out how less then stellar the JCP is in practice. So eventually someone put up a bunch of PDF drafts in some halfway secret locations last year. But the current loose collection of PDFs is no replacement for an actual, up-to-date specification, which is JCP's whole point, after all: producing up to date specifications to enable multible, compatible implementations. The point of the JCP is not to play hide and seek with specification updates, until someone complains loud enough, which is what the JVM JSR has done in the past, and still is doing with the 1.6 changes.
cheers,
dalibor topic
Posted by: robilad on February 21, 2006 at 02:15 AM
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as someone not involved in the JCP, it would be interesting to hear more about its problems. I thought the JCP was for bits of controlled work to happen in a coordinated way, not to make sure that they were happening? i.e. its not the control centre for Java (?)
Posted by: asjf on February 21, 2006 at 06:16 AM
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is it possible that there haven't been a tremendous volume of changes to the VM spec to warrant a shiny new VMSpec 2006? I wouldn't exactly call checking out someone's claim that the spec hadn't been updated since 99 a desparate move, more curious than anything. I don't believe I googled that, I believe I went to sun's site and used their search function. Not that hard to do. And there did appear to be a JCP thingamajig associated with it as well. Im not exactly sure there is going to be anything new in the vm spec for java 6 or not. Ive heard rumours over in Jython land about a invokedynamic op or something to that effect. Here is a link to Gilad Bracha's weblog where he talks about the instruction and mentions starting a JSR up for it soon(maybe it exists?):
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/gbracha?entry=invokedynamic
gotta run!
leouser
Posted by: leouser on February 21, 2006 at 06:46 AM
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Ferrets are cute, but they have really pointy teeth...
Always question those who advocate starting over from scratch as the best way to foster innovation. History indicates that explosive innovation occurs once some critical mass of infrastructure is developed, and clearly Java and the JVM provide a much richer infrastructure environment than Ruby and Rails (a position Bruce Tate agrees with).
--JohnR
Posted by: johnreynolds on February 21, 2006 at 07:12 AM
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The old cliché is true: "When your only weapon is a bazooka, every animal looks like a ferret."
- Trevor
Posted by: trevorwilliams on February 21, 2006 at 07:25 AM
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leouser: the purpose of the JCP is to have up to date speciftications of JCP-developed standards to allow independant implementations. Yes, it may be easy to find some of the updates today, but that hasn't been the case for most of the past 7 years, and I had to waste my time guesstimating information about class format changes to get an idea why Sun kept upping the class file format version numbers between Java 1.2 and 1.5. Thanks for nothing, JCP.
JCP has been less than stelar in promoting and enabling compatibility in the JVM area in the past, despite that being pretty much JCP's purpose. Yes, I do expect the JCP to release full specifications for each released version of the JVM, that's what the JCP is there for. Being able to cobble bits and peices of information together from some weblogs is no replacement for having a current, maintained, full specification for the latest JVM. Try writing your own VM, and you'll see how useful that is.
cheers,
dalibor topic
Posted by: robilad on February 21, 2006 at 07:27 AM
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Trevor,
I guess it should be "When your only weapon is a bazooka, every animal looks the same" against "When your only weapon is a ferret-trap, every animal looks like a ferret" :)
Posted by: kirillcool on February 21, 2006 at 07:36 AM
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really, so you've tried writing your own VM? Do you have any instructions you've run into that aren't in the spec?
leouser
Posted by: leouser on February 21, 2006 at 07:42 AM
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How did this "poor clients stink" session turn into a "JCP stinks" discussion?! ;)
Posted by: evickroy on February 21, 2006 at 07:50 AM
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Ruby on Rails is sadly old news. If you've worked with web applications for more than 2 years you know what is wrong with it.
Talk about solution without a problem!
1. RoR solves the "insta-blog" application, yet they don't even use it for their own blog.
2. For a typical mom and pop shop, you don't need MVC, sorry blog zealots and Bruce Tate, you just don't. You have 5-6 pages with SQL's pasted right into the page themselves. Total application building time, 3 hours. Effort to construct, 0. Complexity of maintenance, 0.
3. Ruby has god awful syntax, I'm (and I suspect most people do) lump this in with the Perls of the world.
4. Do I really want to use a language that was a failure prior to the advent of Rails
5. Do I really want to use probably the slowest language in the great language shootout?
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/
I think they would like us to believe that the world starts and stops with RoR, but it's just one more in the long line of technologies geared towards the web that supposedly make stuff easier. From what I've seen it might, but in a way that I have no need for.
Bruce Tate has no problem making money off it in the interim however! Let's write a book! Let's hold a conference! When I look at the writings that Bruce puts out there, I keep thinking this guy spends more time following and less time actually learning and experimenting. Has he bothered implementing a mom and pop site? Has he tried existing architectures? Has he worked with php? How many has he put up? I'm guessing the fat number 0. Maybe he should try working with something like Php before proclaiming Rails as god and template for modern Java.
What I really want from them is to keep regurgitating the classic David H.H. blog axiom. "Rails is a disruptive technology." That's really convincing fellas, I'm sold.
Posted by: ilazarte on February 21, 2006 at 07:51 AM
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evickroy: I think its because I made a joke about the Bruce Tate article, which I guess I shouldn't do! :D
leouser
Posted by: leouser on February 21, 2006 at 08:08 AM
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In Soviet Russia, the ferret traps you!OK, sorry, no more beer at lunch for me. ;-)
Posted by: cajo on February 21, 2006 at 09:02 AM
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In Corporate America, the ferret is your boss! :-p
Posted by: rickcarson on February 22, 2006 at 09:43 PM
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(Sorry about the double post, it did not respect my br/ tags for some reason, hopefully this will be more readable)
When you look at the history of Ruby, you see that Matz describes how he liked some things about Perl, but was frustrated about wanting certain other things, such as an OO approach, which was why he came up with Ruby, so Ruby's similarity to Perl should not be surprising.
Also if you look at the bios of the people who are having multiple orgasms over Ruby, they are the ones who either liked Perl but wanted something better, or who had to use Perl on a regular basis.
So I think that suggesting that Java programmers should upgrade to Ruby is disengenius. Yes, there are Java programmers who switched, but for the most part their Java programming is irrelevant, because the switchers were all Perl fans as well as being Java programmers.
Ruby is therefore more of a challenge to Perl 5/6/Parrot than Java.
Now, I've had a look at some of Bruce's other books, and I agree with most of the flamage he's getting on Java.Net. However, I think that there is a point which he could have made a bit better without all the sensationalism... of course all the conflict and drama stirs up interest in his books which may help sales etc etc.
Anyway, that point being that if you want to quickly slap together a dinky little website, there are other alternatives than Java. And you could even go so far as to say that most of the 'big corporate websites' are actually just glorified dinky little websites that are front ends to databases.
Are the alternatives better? Maybe, maybe not. If I just want to slap together a website I could choose to use Struts/Hibernate/JSPs.... but I'd end up spending more time twiddling the XML (which is surprisingly time consuming) than programming in Java. Personally my preference would be servlets + JDBC. Give me the raw code every time. Would my way be faster? Yes, and probably by an order of magnitude. Would it be better than slapping something together in PHP or Perl? Well, I think it wouldn't be much slower than PHP (or even faster depending on skill perhaps?) - and it would certainly be a lot more readable and maintainable than the Perl mess would likely be.
A better question would be 'is Ruby on Rails a PHP killer?'.
But perhaps an even better question would be something like 'what is the best language to develop AJAX applications in?'. I think that gmail and other AJAX applications are going to raise people's expectations about what a 'dinky little web app' is going to be able to do. If Ruby makes AJAX really easy then good for it, maybe that would be a compelling reason to switch to it. But just talking to a database... that seems pretty trivial/boilerplate to me. I mean, if you are into that sort of thing, then instead of Ruby on Rails you should look at what Apple has done with XCode, it completely blows everything in this space out of the water (you can go from an entity diagram to a fully operational app with save/load, undo/redo, nice layout etc without writing any code!).
There is something that strikes me as deeply strange about Bruce's description of his problem. I've seen it in several places too. He says that he struggled with the problem for four months. Okay so far. Then they tried Ruby. Okay no problem. The first thing they did was sit down and write the data model. I quote "Tate: I implemented the data model in 2 days". Umm... wait a second, rewind that part, wtf???
They didn't have a data model? They worked on it for four months, and they didn't have a data model at the end of those four months? I think there must have been something fundamentally wrong about the way either Bruce, or the company he was working with approached the problem. I'm kind of 'old school' though, a data model (even if it is not quite finalised yet) is one of the things I want to see really really early in the project. How on earth could you scope the work or give a quote if you didn't even have any idea how many tables would be in the database, or how complicated the relationships between entities were?
It just seems weird in a 'we are not in Kansas anymore Toto' kind of way. It makes me want to ask what on earth they were doing for those four months?
Posted by: rickcarson on February 22, 2006 at 10:19 PM
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I wouldn't be so quick to discount new technologies. We all adopted Java over another technology at one point.
When men are the most sure and arrogant they are commonly the most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation and suspense which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities.
-- David Hume
Posted by: phlogistic on February 23, 2006 at 01:35 PM
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getting back to ferrets i have got four of them but i use mine to hunt rabbits for the pot.am i missing something?
Posted by: cheekey on February 02, 2007 at 04:13 AM
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