Beyond Java - Bruce Tate [8]
Most major commercial vendors support Java, or a close derivative (C#). As a result, you can buy applications, servers, components, tools, services, and even management consoles for Java.
Open source is a thriving force in its own right, and it is driving incredible innovation daily.
Academic institutions teach Java development, and do research on many Java-related problems. I recently worked with a start-up that's working on a tool, born in a university research lab, that can predict Java performance, given a UML diagram.
The JVM is a powerful innovation in its own right, and allows unprecedented portability. Some experts believe that the JVM may be more important than the Java language itself.
Now, you might believe, as I recently did, that all of this vibrant community trumps any language advantage, in all but the most extreme problems. And even if you did find such a problem, what's the compelling alternative? How will it ever find enough developers to reach a critical mass? You're probably thinking: face it, Bruce, there's .NET and Java, and .NET is, by design, as close as legally possible to Java. Adopting .NET would be like overhauling your diet by swearing off McDonalds, and going to Burger King every day. After that, there's nothing.
This much is true. If there is no credible alternative, your best course is to keep looking inside the Java community for answers. In that case, this is a dead book, and you can just let it be. But give me a few more pages, lest you close it too soon.
New Horizons
Keep in mind that I'm a cynic at heart. When it comes to technologies, it takes a whole lot of effort to get me excited. I still have never written a web service, at least with the massive IBM and Microsoft stacks, and I didn't write my first EJB until 2003. I've never written an EJB entity bean unless it was to build a case against them, and never will. I've instead preferred simpler architectures, like REST, POJO programming, transparent persistence, and Spring. Even then, I was late to those parties.
It's even tougher to get me to play with a new language. Dave Thomas, a highly respected programmer and a gifted teacher, is fond of saying that you should learn a new programming language every couple of months. I've probably averaged one every five years, and I rarely do more than dabble. But recently, in my dabbling, I've found a couple of startling innovations. These frameworks had ideas that just about reached out and ripped me out of my chair this year.
I've taken a little more time than usual to survey the interesting innovations around new programming languages. When it comes to building web pages and application servers, two ideas have my undivided attention: metaprogramming (like Ruby on Rails) and continuation servers (like Seaside on Smalltalk). Neither of these two innovations is happening with much impact in Java. You'll get a deeper treatment in Chapters 7 and 8, but it's enough to say for now that they are both many times more productive than their Java alternatives.
Dynamic Languages
Java is a language with many compromises . Many of the features of Java are appropriate for building operating system extensions and middleware, but limit application development. Consider this Ruby fragment:
something = "Owls and Ostriches"
4.times {puts something}
These simple little lines of code print Owls and Ostriches four times. Look at the power in this language:
You don't have to worry about details like typing, if you don't want to. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, Ruby will type it as a duck. This saves more time than you think.
4 is an object. Everything is an object. You can send methods to a 4, or a string, just like any other object in the system.
{puts something} is a code block. You can pass a code block as a parameter, and Ruby lets methods deal with the code blocks. This construct dramatically simplifies things like iteration, and lets you quickly customize