Gregg, On Dec 28, 2007 3:48 PM, Gregg Wonderly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > jeffrschneider wrote: > > 2. Gregg Wonderly will suggest either JXTA or Jini as an alternative > > to some solution on each and every post. > > Quite while back I observed that most of the posts to this group were by > fairly limited focus people who make money from products or services which > they offer and which make it impossible for them to consider anything > remotely capable of upsetting their focus. > > I've given up trying to convince anyone. Few if any of the disputers have > actually deployed a Jini system in a production environment, from what I > can tell. There are several misconceptions about Java and the RMI > programming model that keep getting into printed text as supporting > argument. Remember Anne's statement about everything in RMI being a > remote reference?
I, for one, have greatly appreciated your contributions to this list. I've found them very educational. And I'll have you know that I recommended a spaces-based solution to a client last month. I don't do it often--not because I don't appreciate the power of the solution--but because it isn't mainstream, and for most organizations in most circumstances, a mainstream solution is the better choice unless there's a significant reason to go with an alternative. This reasoning is why I am still very reserved about recommending REST. I'm waiting for better tooling and more experienced talent to become available. > > Here's my view on what's up for the next year or so... > > Microsoft is still pushing .Net as if they invented the concept of a > virtual machine. It's really just a recreation of the basic principals of > Java, which they recognized early on. The JVM has hundreds of > languages that target it, most, it seems to make use of the large > library of software provided by Java. It will be interesting to see how > the evolution continues. The opensourcing of Java has created some > different momentum in the Linux world it seems. There is an interest > in moving towards a single execution environment it seems to me. > We'll see how much the Java vs .Net camps move this year. The war between Java and .NET is so over. Java is the dominant language, to be sure, but .NET is #2, and the two co-exist very nicely. I'm much more interested in the compiled vs dynamic language debate. > We seem to continue to see the proliferation of scripting languages > into more parts of production software. There is an ever evolving need to > support people with limited programming experience and training to > create more and more software. The result seems to be that less and > less real design is creeping into more and more critical software > (scripting happens the most at the top layer where software services > are controlled by scripting). I think that over the next couple of years > there will be dramatic number of computer system exploits and > catastrophic failures as more and more broken software creeps out > onto the network being used by people who have no idea how > software could possibly be a security risk to them. I guess we know which side of the fence you stand on... > > Everyone seems to think that only one representation is needed for > inter-machine communications, and that is XML. The semantic > meaning, which is creeping into more and more XML document > structures, indicate we are creating another programming > anguage/layer. This requires everyone to support those semantics > at all usage points with explicit coding, which will cause disparate > implementations. So, I predict that this will be part and cause to > many of the key problems which XML users get to deal with. > > Microsoft seems set on making XML become part of the accepted > syntax of at least one .Net language. Are you referring to XAML? Note that Microsoft's Oslo project -- a DSL modeling language -- is not XML-based. It's more like C#. So not everything that Microsoft is doing in the language domain is migrating toward XML. I'll also point out that the Java language is also embracing XML. It's hard to do Java development without dealing with XML -- build tasks, deployment descriptors, etc. > This seems to be certain to cause people to use more XML and less > programming language code structure. The result will be less reusable > code and more application specific code. Or perhaps just the opposite -- effective separation of concerns enables better reuse. But I think the developer population will need to learn some new skills to achieve reusability. > It will be difficult to extract out application specific XML from general > code structure. Thus, code base sizes will expand, perhaps dramatically, > in this environment. > I'm not sure I follow. .NET uses a technique called Code Behind that cleanly separates XML and application code. > We will all get to continue to depend on machine and OS vendors > driving how we write software, instead of our real needs being met. > For me, Jini allows all of my real needs to be met on all platforms/OSes > with all the performance and security I need. > > Sigh...Hope everyone has a good 2008... Cheer up Gregg! Jini and JavaSpaces are forever in open source, so you will be able to program to your heart's content as long as you like. Happy New Year everyone! Anne > > Gregg Wonderly >
