Beyond Java - Bruce Tate [5]
Danger Signs
A large number of the applications that we write put a web-based frontend over a database, sometimes with additional business rules and sometimes without. Yet, after more than five years of solving this problem over and over, we still can't solve it very quickly in the Java space. Further, most Java framework developers are making incremental changes that won't truly revolutionize web development. Building a new team to solve this problem in the right way is a demanding job. Building a team from, say, COBOL programmers, is nearly impossible. The language is too alien, the frameworks too extensive, and the landscape too unstable. Even with seasoned developers, it takes a surprising amount of code to get even simple applications off the ground.
Jason Hunter: The Next Big Thing
Author of Java Servlet Programming
Jason Hunter works as a lead applications engineer at Mark Logic. He's the author of Java Servlet Programming (O'Reilly). As Apache's representative to the Java Community Process Executive Committee, he established a landmark agreement allowing open source Java. He is publisher of Servlets.com and XQuery.com, is an original contributor to Apache Tomcat, is a member of the expert groups responsible for Servlet, JSP, JAXP, and XQJ API development, and has participated in the W3C XQuery Working Group. He also co-created the open source JDOM library to enable optimized Java and XML integration.
Is Java in danger of losing its leadership position?
JH: Java's already ended its leadership run. It happened maybe two years ago when the best brains in the industry stopped focusing on Java as a technology and started splitting off into other areas of interest. It's only gotten worse as of late. The departure of Josh Bloch and Neal Gaftner to Google is a high-profile sign of the changing tide. But they're not alone. If you want to push the envelope these days, you don't do it by innovating on Java. You may do it with Java, but not on Java.
It doesn't mean Java's dead. It just means Java isn't cutting edge anymore. It's plenty understood, plenty stable, and entirely ready for outsourcing.
What's next?
JH: What's next? I don't think there's one thing. There's definitely not one language. Java's still the ubiquitous language. The innovation now is happening on top. Exciting areas: web remoting (a.k.a. Ajax), search (a.k.a. Google and XQuery), and folksonomies (a.k.a. flickr tags).
I have a very practical way of evaluating what is the hot technology: [determining] what earns you the most money being a trainer of that technology. Java definitely was the hot technology for years. I earned twice what the C++ trainers were receiving. It wasn't that Java was harder, just that there was more demand than supply.
If you train on something commoditized (like C++ was and Java is now), you get mass-market rates. If you train on something too bleeding edge, you don't get enough customers.
I don't see any movement right now that's got the same huge swell potential as Java had. What are the "alpha geeks " doing, as Tim O'Reilly calls them? Well, James Davidson dug deeply into the Mac. But there's not a huge amount of room for experts in that market. There aren't enough business dollars to be earned. I've gone into XQuery, which I've found a fun and useful way to bring search ideas "in-house" and put you in control of what you find and what you do with it. Mike Clark became an expert on automation. My advice to people without a target yet is to learn Subversion and help companies transition from CVS to SVN.
But we're all going in separate ways. We've agreed on the Java base, but are diverging on what we do with that now-ubiquitous standard.
Your questions are very focused on Java and "alternatives to Java." The Web wasn't an alternative to Windows. It was different. The tech phase we're in now isn't about an alternative