--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <noozg...@...> wrote: > > TurquoiseB wrote: > > > > So they're trying to reinvent the wheel with a > > Java for the Web. :-) > > > > Probably because IBM is trying to buy Sun, and > > will soon own Java. > > Maybe they will fix it. Java is very weak and hard to > use for GUIs. I don't think JavaFX helped that much.
Maybe they will. I am still on the periphery of IBM because I'm a consultant and not an employee, but in terms of "business ethics" and "trying to do a good job" I have to admit that I have been impressed so far. All of our products have to be "Blue Washed" before they can be sold through IBM channels. So what does that entail? Well, for one thing, it involves scouring through every line of code for every application, and all of the icons in its GUIs, ferchrissakes, to determine if they were really "invented here." "Borrowed code," even if legitimately borrowed from Open Source software, does not get a "pass." And if you borrowed from something like the Sun Java libraries (as one of our products did, completely legitimately), that also does not get a "pass." IBM is going to force those developers to sit in a room with the spec and reverse engineer the routines they previously borrowed to make sure that there is no *possible* ques- tion of ownership. I find this impressive, having seen its opposite at Microsoft and Computer Associates. I also find the *quality* of the IBM employees I've been meeting and interacting with online rather impressive. And I am Not Easily Impressed. A lot of these people came out of Watson Labs, which is one of the great "thinktank" organi- zations on the planet. Have you ever been on a conference call in which you had occasion to suspect *most* of the people on the call of being geniuses? Neither had I, until recently. IBM's bureaucracy is sometimes infuriating. I can tell you that fersure. But SO FAR, their integrity about doing business and the level of people I have been meeting who are doing that business have been very impressive indeed. So if there is any company that can fix Java, they might just be it. This is definitely "not your father's IBM."
