Slashdot Mirror

Drawing on Haskell, Clojure, and ML, the new Lux language first targeted the Java Virtual Machine, but will be a universal, cross-platform language. An anonymous reader quotes JavaWorld: Currently in an 0.5 beta release, Lux claims that while it implements features common to Lisp-like languages, such as macros, they're more flexible and powerful in Lux... [W]hereas Clojure is dynamically typed, as many Lisp-like languages have been, Lux is statically typed to reduce bugs and enhance performance. Lux also lets programmers create new types programmatically, which provides some of the flexibility found in dynamically typed languages. The functional language Haskell has type classes, but Lux is intended to be less constraining. Getting around any constraints can be done natively to the language, not via hacks in the type system.
There's a a 16-chapter book about the language on GitHub.

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Andrew Binstock writes at Dr. Dobb's that a recurring prejudice in the forums where the cool kids hang out is against Java, often described as verbose and fading in popularity but Binstock sees little supporting evidence of Java being in some kind of long-term decline. While it is true that Java certainly can be verbose, several scripting languages have sprung up which are purpose-designed to spare developers from long syntactical passages to communicate a simple action, including NetRexx, Groovy, and Scala. As far as Java's popularity goes, normally, when technologies start their ultimate decline, tradeshows are the first to reflect the disintegrating community. But the recent JavaOne show was clearly larger and better attended than it has been in either of the last two years and vendors on the exhibiting floor were unanimous in saying that traffic, leads, and inquiries were up significantly over last year. Technically, the language continues to advance says Binstock. Java 8, expected in March, will add closures (that is, lambda expressions) that will reduce code, diminish the need for anonymous inner classes, and facilitate functional-like coding. Greater modularity which will be complete in Java 9 (due in 2016) will help efficient management of artifacts, as will several enhancements that simplify syntax in that release. 'When you add in the Android ecosystem, whose native development language is Java, it becomes very difficult to see how a language so widely used in so many areas — server, Web, desktop, mobile devices — is in some kind of decline,' concludes Binstock. 'What I'm seeing is a language that is under constant refinement and development, with a large and very active community, which enjoys a platform that is widely used for new languages. None of this looks to me like a language in decline.'"

Esther Schindler writes "Those hours you spent rolling dice in your youth weren't wasted according to my 10 Business Lessons I Learned from Playing Dungeons & Dragons. Playing fantasy role playing games did more than teach the rules of combat or proper behavior in a dragon's lair. D&D can instruct you in several skills that can help your career. Such as: 'One spell, used well, can be more powerful than an entire book full of spells' and 'It's better to out-smart an orc than to fight one.'" What other wisdom have you gained from your time sequestered with various RPGs?

Rusty Nuts writes "JavaWorld has a great article on the future of Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB). Are you frustrated learning EJB 2.1 or already know EJBs but loathe its complexities? Hold on a bit more for the the future of EJBs is looking brighter for you."

aeoo writes "The Register says that Rich Green, the vice president of developer platforms and the major public voice for Java is 'quitting Sun in disgust' due to the recent settlement between Sun and Microsoft. The article hints that there may be more to follow. On the other hand, there is an article at eWeek with a different slant, saying that Rich Green tendered his resignation prior to the settlement. What impact, if any, will this have on open sourcing Java? It looks like Sun is still considering it."

PotPieMan writes "I recently finished reading JSP and Tag Libraries for Web Development, a book for JSP developers wanting to improve their skillset. Read on for my review." It's not a new book, but still relevant. JSP and Tag Libraries for Web Development author Wellington L.S. da Silva pages 420, including appendices publisher New Riders rating 6 reviewer PotPieMan ISBN 0735710953 summary A guide to designing and implementing JSP applications, with a focus on tag libraries.

The Scoop Web developers and designers have long wrestled with strategies for combining their efforts. Web developers don't mind looking at code but dislike dealing with the look of a page, while Web designers are the opposite. Dynamic Web page technologies, such as Microsoft's ASP, Perl's many template systems and Web frameworks (Text::Template, HTML::Template, HTML::Mason, CGI::Application, etc.), and PHP, were designed to give both developers and designers a chance to do their work without stepping on each other's toes.

Sun's answer was to release the Servlet API and later extend that to make JavaServer Pages. Initially, there was no clear role separation for servlets and JSPs, since a servlet could generate and display HTML just as easily as a JSP could perform business logic. The Model 2 architecture, based on Smalltalk's Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern, showed that servlets and JSPs complemented each other. Tag libraries extended the functionality of JSPs in a way that made it easier for developers and designers to collaborate.

JSP and Tag Libraries for Web Development is mostly targeted at Web developers who want advice on designing JSP applications and incorporating tag libraries. The book covers custom tag libraries, the Jakarta Struts framework, and various commercial and noncommercial tag libraries, such as Jakarta Taglibs.

What's to Like? The author starts with an introduction to servlets and JSPs, including a decent explanation of MVC. If you are comfortable with servlets and JSPs, this discussion is really more of a review than anything else.

The next two chapters introduce tag libraries and the author's example application (a simple article and author tracking system). The author illustrates the lifecycle of a tag, which helps if you haven't really used or written custom tags before. Da Silva also gives a very detailed discussion of tag library descriptors (TLDs). Some details might have been better left as an appendix, but it is nice to see such a comprehensive explanation of what you can put in a TLD.

Da Silva then spends about 100 pages on writing simple tags, iteration tags, body tags, and making all of these types of tags cooperate. The discussion is again very detailed, but seems unfocused in many parts. Very little of the code in these chapters ties in with his example application.

Next, the author spends three chapters on the Jakarta Struts framework. He explains how Struts naturally fits into the MVC design pattern and gives various examples of how to structure your Struts application. He also includes an entire chapter on finishing his example application, going over Struts ActionForms, Struts Actions (including a method to prevent double submission that I had not seen before), and Struts' method of internationalization on JSPs.

Finally, the author runs through the Jakarta Taglibs project and some commercial tag libraries. Brief examples are provided, but this chapter really needed more attention than da Silva gave it.

What's to Consider Overall, JSP and Tag Libraries for Web Development feels unfocused. The author's central points are explained well in many places, but lost in many others. With some reorganization, I think the book could make a much stronger case for appropriate uses of tag libraries, both application-specific and general (e.g. Struts and Taglibs).

Sections where general tag libraries are discussed read very much like the documentation available on project Web sites, such as the struts-html tag library documentation. These really should have been left as an appendix, with better explanations and usage examples provided in their place.

I was also very disappointed in the author's use of Struts Action classes. He combined various actions (add, edit, delete, etc.) to perform on a specific object and tested for a URL parameter to decide what to do. In my opinion, each action should be encapsulated in one Action class (AddObjectAction, EditObjectAction, and DeleteObjectAction). The author's design leads to URL hackery which Struts tries to avoid.

Recently, Struts released a stable version of the 1.1 series, which this book does not cover (it was published in early 2002). Readers should be familiar with the Struts documentation for this release before picking up this book.

The book's Web site is under construction, and I've been able to find little information on the publisher's site.

The Summary A okay book with room for improvement. While the author shows his technical knowledge, the book loses its direction in places. Most developers can probably get by with the documentation available on the Web. Table of Contents

1. Understanding the Tag Library Extension API
2. 1. Introduction to Servlets and JavaServer Pages
   2. Introduction to Tag Libraries
   3. Writing Custom Tags
   4. Cooperating Tags and Validation
   5. Design Considerations
3. The Struts Framework
4. 1. The Jakarta Struts Project
   2. Struts Tag Libraries
   3. Anatomy of a Struts Application
5. The Jakarta Taglibs and Other Resources
   1. The Jakarta Taglibs Project
   2. Commercial Tag Libraries
   3. Other Resources
6. Appendices
7. 1. Tomcat
   2. Allaire JRun
   3. Orion
   4. MySQL
   5. Mapping Servlet-JSP Objects
   6. The Apache Software License, Version 1.1

You can purchase the JSP and Tag Libraries for Web Development from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Java World is featuring the first part of a series comparing J2ME and the .Net CF vaporware (ok, it will exist at some point). It does tout the normal Java "features" such as being cross-platform in comparison to the mono-platform reality of .NET CFF. It has a bizarre critique of .Net CLR for being object oriented, and mentions the fact that most of the Linux PDAs coming out now run Java as an advantage for Java. (I love my Zaurus but I can't imagine it being useful for most people.)

Java World is featuring the first part of a series comparing J2ME and the .Net CF vaporware (ok, it will exist at some point). It does tout the normal Java "features" such as being cross-platform in comparison to the mono-platform reality of .NET CFF. It has a bizarre critique of .Net CLR for being object oriented, and mentions the fact that most of the Linux PDAs coming out now run Java as an advantage for Java. (I love my Zaurus but I can't imagine it being useful for most people.)

sthiyaga writes: "JavaWorld presents the winners of its 2002 Editors' Choice Awards. 5 out of 10 categories were won by open source projects! It's great to see JBoss win the 'Best Java Application Server' category, beating both BEA's WebLogic and IBM's WebSphere! Read the article at JavaWorld."

Some Guy writes: "Javaworld has another article (the second in a series of three) on Aspect-Oriented Programming. Grady Booch wrote last year that AOP is one of three signs of a disruptive software technology in the horizon: a technology that could take us to the next level beyond object-oriented programming."

f00zbll writes: "A good article about development and OOP/OOD. The lessons apply to most OO languages and OOD. Interview with Joshua Bloch over at Javaworld. Ignore the fact that Java is owned by Sun and use the tips to help your work/project/development."

rleyton writes: "javaworld has an article on Microsoft J#.net - offering developers a migration path to .net for their VJ++ projects. JDK 1.1.4, and Windows platform support only, of course..."

rleyton writes: "javaworld has an article on Microsoft J#.net - offering developers a migration path to .net for their VJ++ projects. JDK 1.1.4, and Windows platform support only, of course..."

TheWildBanana writes, "The editors of JavaWorld asked readers to participate in their 1999 JavaWorld Readers' Choice Awards. Under the entry of Best Free Product, the Java Apache Project JServ grabbed the top spot." It's important to remember that Apache is much more than just the Web server project. :)

TheWildBanana writes, "The editors of JavaWorld asked readers to participate in their 1999 JavaWorld Readers' Choice Awards. Under the entry of Best Free Product, the Java Apache Project JServ grabbed the top spot." It's important to remember that Apache is much more than just the Web server project. :)

Julien Flack writes "JavaWorld has an interesting article on the Jini Community and its approach to open source. The Sun Community Source License (SCSL) "is an amalgam of open source principles and for-profit licensing models of the past." according to this article, which claims SCSL is in the spirit of ESR' Bazaar. "

Jikes has been released as Open Source today, under the following pretty unrestrictive licence, which has been endorsed by Bruce Perens of Open Source. This is a big step since Jikes is a leading Java compiler and is really fast. It also signals the first Open Source license that IBM has crafted, this being their original code. I hope this will be the beginning of a successful relationship between IBM and the Open Source community. Read below the slashdot exclusive nerd announcement from Dave Shields, one of the Jikes co-authors and the open-source contact for Jikes. Jikes is Now Open Source

On behalf of IBM Research, Philippe Charles and Dave Shields are pleased to announce that the IBM Research Jikes Compiler is now an Open Source Project. You can download the source now.

We will continue to work on the compiler, emphasizing -- as we always have -- strict adherence to the Java Language Specification, and will also continue to seek Sun's guidance on the proper interpretation of the specification where we find the intent to be unclear.

All discussion will be carried out in full public view using mailing lists. You can subscribe here.

We look forward to collaborating with the Java and Open Source communities to make Jikes an even better compiler, and will welcome voluntary contributions early in 1999 -- after we've all had a chance to get acquainted via the mailing list before hacking away, and after the two of us take some vacation time.

We wish to thank the many Slashdot readers who gave of their time to respond to our query "Should IBM Release the Source Code for Jikes?" (see the Comment Summary) , and also thank Sengan Baring-Gould (slashdot), Nelson Minar (MIT) and Bruce Perens (opensource.org) -- they helped make this happen.

End of announcement

Ok here are the pitfalls you may encounter in getting Jikes up and running, so beware: the zipped distribution contains text in DOS-format, so gnu make chokes on it. Make sure you unzip with the -a option. The tar.gz version has the files in *NIX format. Also, some distributions, such as Red Hat 4.2 do not have wchar.h which is needed. I got it to compile by making sure the Red Hat (libc5) entry was the last above OBJECTS in the Makefile and executing touch /usr/include/wchar.h as root. Also you'll need the JDK from blackdown.org to compile anything with jikes.

True story: Dave Shields ate out at a Chinese restaurant Saturday. His fortune: "Very soon, and in pleasant company"! That's us ;-)

Snoop Baron writes " The Java Lobby is holding a poll on their front page along with a discussion thread on the question: Should Sun make Java open source? Expect a lot of Java stories next week as the Java Business Expo starts on Monday. Of particular interest are the Java World awards, where many products that run on Linux are finalists: IBM Research's Jikes, Tower J's fast commercial native Java compiler, the GPL'd Kaffe VM, Metroworks' IDE (soon), JDK 1.2 (soon). It's interesting how stong IBM's showing is with 7 entries beating Sun's 5.

As part of their 20,000 member drive, the Java Lobby is teaming up with the Java Journal to offer every one of their members a free subscription for a year. This offer is unlike most others in that people who live outside the US can also benefit... In related news, there's a rather interesting article about Java Virtual Machine performance showing that Linux has far to go. But has anyone performed a VolcanoMark test under Kaffe? On the other hand, TowerJ's native compiler does rather well... I wonder what performance Cygnus' offering will have (it's based on gcc and compiles native code).

Tom Corbin writes "Here's an interesting article talking about the best of show and some cool demos at JavaOne The neat thing is the "Cyberonics Java-controlled soft realtime (22-30 millisecond) Process Logic Controller, or PLC, running the Sun JDK straight off the Web on the Linux operating system.""

Ok I've got tons of stuff worth posting, and we've already posted tons of stuff, sooo, here is a quick list of excellent linkage. This article about Competing Javas was sent in by Dan Marks. xtra sent us this story about 3com's Java work on the palm pilot. Kai Voigt wrote in to tell us that Turkmenistan is selling .tl domains for $50 just like Tonga. Costs more than interNIC? Hmm... Kurt Gray sent us a pair of articles, Bootnet is talking about Matrox's new OpenGL board that is better than VooDoo? And The Onion is running a humorous piece about MS Patenting ones and zeros. Now everyone go back to work!