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Q&A With James Gosling, Father of Java
Minaloush writes to tell us that in a recent Q&A with Sun's James Gosling, the father of Java fielded questions on the GPL, security, the role of Java in the enterprise. "If you come up with a good software development tool, that makes life easier for the developers and they can get their job done quicker, then the first thing the manager says is 'oh you've got free time on your hands. Do this extra thing'."
Crafting tools is not wasting time. Frequently the fastest way to accomplish s six-week project is to take a month to write the tool...which will then complete the project in under a week. Management with your attitude will a) never see tools produced that increase the department's overall productivity and b) you won't have the best people working for you. No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here.
"The reason Java isn't a footnote in history is because of the enormous efforts people and companies other than Gosling and Sun have invested in fixing up its problems and turning Java into a decent platform for server-side development."
Bollocks. The Java API is rather brilliant in both its usability and its extensive features, not to mention its documentation. The Java language is rather easy to learn (many, many universities use it as the first language of choice) and isn't too far from C++ to be easily learned. And it's memory protection and garbage collection make life *much* easier and safer. That is the reason why Java succeeded, and most, if not all of it (in the first years) by extensive help by Sun. And Sun is also responsible for keeping Java the clean language it is today, without pre-processor, without operator overloading, properties and all the other things that makes maintaining C++ so much *fun*.
Java is in no way shape or form an analogy to COBOL. It's a fast, maintainable, highly portable language that's used to write a huge amount of new software today.
Your predjudice is baseless. The reasons behind the existence of both languages have a great deal of overlap.
No language, no matter how "fast, maintainable, [or] highly portable language", can prevent an enterprise app from becoming a total maintenance nightmare after 20 years of feature creep. That's why it's analogous to COBOL. A few decades from now, extensive and current Java experience will command some nice consulting fees. I also predict Ruby/Python knowledge to become about as useful Pascal.
Frequently the fastest way to accomplish s six-week project is to take a month to write the tool...which will then complete the project in under a week. Management with your attitude will a) never see tools produced that increase the department's overall productivity and b) you won't have the best people working for you.
What are you talking about? Are you saying you should be able to sit on your ass for two weeks, because you brought in something ahead of schedule? Guess what: you're being paid to work. If you bring in something ahead of schedule, you should expect a "nice job" with points that count eventual promotion and pay raise -- along with a new assignment.
Or to put it another way, when you're late with an assignment, do you pay the company back for the time you've wasted? Thought not.
Respect is a two-way street. No one like working in the hamster wheel, but no one likes managing (or working with) the prima donna who thinks he can just put in solid work when he feels like it.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.