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Perl vs. Java
Posted by daniel on July 30, 2004 at 06:30 AM | Comments (5)
All about trust
There has been great feedback to my whining this week about the OS community treatment of Java. Really, I'm not complaining so much as I'm trying to understand the issues. I am hoping that since these blogs also scroll on the O'Reilly network pages, someone from the Perl community (chromatic?) can help me understand this. The following is a question and not a troll - really.
So yesterday I was in a meeting hosted by a company that is preparing to open source a major project (no - it was not a meeting with Sun about Java - don't start the rumor mill). A prominent voice from the community made the observation that Perl development filters through Larry and that he has a lot of control on the process. In fact, at his State of the Onion, Larry talked about a horrible year of dealing with a stomach tumor and complications that arose. Of course our concerns are first with his health, but even he thought a bit about what impact that had on Perl.
How does Sun's control of Java and the mechanisms that Sun has set up for introducing new features into Java compare to Larry's control of Perl and the mechanisms for introducing new features there?
In Also in Java Today , the way you print in a Java application has changed in almost every release of J2SE. In Printing Components with PrinterJob "you will use PrinterJob to print a GUI component. Because components are what make up the UI of your application, this is how you can enable a user to print exactly what they see on the screen. You will be able to set attributes and specify PageFormat options for printing."
Steve Holzner's "Eclipse Cookbook" offers recipes for hundreds of Eclipse issues. In this week's excerpt from ONJava.com, Steve looks at customizing an existing perspective to create just the right combination of views for you. In a second recipe, he shows how to speed up Eclipse by turning off syntax and problem-checking features if you don't need them.
John Reynolds makes a Public plea to the EJB 3.0 expert group: Please review the EJB 2.0 CMP and JDO FAQ in today's
Weblogs.
Steve Mallet posts video on Open Source Java Proposed.
Back to getters and setters in today's
Forums. Marc writes " In almost the places I've seen getters/setters, it is to expose a property that should be public. Some people say that properties should not be exposed, but I've never heard a convincing argument for this."
Who should Check parameters for validity? Coxcu writes "This is best done by the compiler. Failing that, there should be tools to help the programmer do it."
Robilad wants to know why "all the nice specifications drafts from JSRs using the JCP 2.6 process come with a nice catch: you are not allowed to discuss them with anyone who hasn't licensed the specifications. Interestingly, the final releases do not have such a clause. What is the reasoning behind that?
In Projects and Communities, the latest
NetBeans community newsletter has a link to an explanation of NetBeans JavaHelp integration API. This is used to add help to a module or to display help.
The Mac Java community home page features a link to JForumla 2.7 which is "is a java library for evaluating various mathematical expressions like 2x + cos( y ) or boolean expressions."
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Comments
Comments are listed in date ascending order (oldest first) | Post Comment
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Benevolent Dictactor vs. Benvolent Corporation?
I think perhaps the difference between Perl (& Python) and Java is that the former are extensions of individuals rather then property of a for-profit corporation.
People can be loyal those who rely on them.
For profit corporations answer only to stock holders, and those stock holders can force good corporations to do bad things (ala SCO).
A third option would probably be best for all involved.
Posted by: johnreynolds on July 30, 2004 at 05:56 AM
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Different cultures
The JCP culture seems to be about corporations making deals on APIs they want to push. There is a lot of legalese involved in it, as corporations like to be able to mutually sue each other to self-destruction, shall the need arise. There is a veil of secrecy, represented by non-disclosure agreements and policies regarding the intermediate results of the JCP process. Things that happen in the open, seem to happen on Yahoo! Groups[1],of all places.
The perl culture seems to be about working together to create a powerful language to build powerful systems with. No lawyers attached. No NDAs. No corporations fighting out their mutual problems over API definitions. No nonsense in copyright licenses. No marketing. No hype. No melodrama. No patents. No trademark trouble.
Both have their pros and cons, of course, depending where you stand, and what you want. With Java you get a community that's bound together by the binding force of legal agreements, and the potential threat of unleashing the wrath of the army of lawyers that cost Microsoft 2bn dollars upon those who dare to break WORA. With Perl you get something that looks quite the same, one head honcho on top who calls the shots, but the community seems to be kept together by the common interests of the participants, rather than legalese.
Not being an active participant in the Perl community[2], I don't know if my perception is just skewed from the apparent lack of mud-slinging on slashdot in the Perl community. There is no lack of that in the java community, unfortunately.
cheers,
dalibor topic
[1] Which amazes me. Sun puts that huge open process thing on the web, on JCP.org. And people who really get to drive the Java platform into the future seem to prefer to go to Yahoo! Groups, or elsewhere for discussing it.
[2] Parrot sounds attractive, though.
Posted by: robilad on July 30, 2004 at 08:05 AM
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Benevolent Dictactor vs. Benvolent Corporation?
3) total democracy. Anyone (and I mean anyone, not just some members of some self-proclaimed group) has a vote and only those items carrying the majority vote get implemented.
Advantage: noone can claim he was treated unfairly.
Disadvantage: no consensus can ever be reached once the group gets to over a few dozen people and development of the platform grinds to a screeching halt.
4) total control by a non-benevolent group (dictatorship).
Advantage: rapid development is possible, no bureaucratic nightmares.
Disadvantage: Noone has a say in anything.
4) total anarchy. Everyone can do as he pleases with no regard for anyone else.
Advantage: you're free!
Disadvantage: total chaos, no more coherent platform. Death of the platform is imminent.
Posted by: jwenting on August 01, 2004 at 07:07 PM
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A community is social, a profiting company can not be.
I had a discussion at a recent NL-JUG meeting about Groovy. Groovy is open source and the person I talked to was under the impression that before long the project would be worthless to the larger public. Money would probably buy the author away from doing things right.
I countered with the point that the community that uses the product would not approve of such things and, when large enough, be self regulating for things like new standards and backwards compatibility.
This point seemed unbelievable to many listeners since the lure of money and power would probably overwhelm such needs. I then explained the point by using an analogy, the difference between corporate and community leadership comes down to this same analogy. Since the guy I was talking to was a father of a little girl I asked him what he would do if he had obligations to clubs/work etc for regularly coming to meetings. And that those obligations would start to have a real effect on the time he could spent with his little girl.
We came to the conclusion that his daughter would definitely "ask" for the attention she needed and he would make sure that both priorities (his daughter and the meetings for work) would be balanced so his little girl would get the attention she deserves.
Now, replace the girl with the community in the above analogy. I believe this can be done since communities are by definition very social places.
This feeling is why you can be sure that any person that cares for that community will make sure the end product is the best possible.
After all; would you want your child to be raised by a corporation?
Posted by: zander on August 03, 2004 at 01:35 AM
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Perl much better then java! phone cards - cheap phone cards
Posted by: rider85 on May 08, 2007 at 05:19 PM
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