Software_development

I was happy to note that Dion Almaer commented on my blog post on Merb. Dion is one of my favorite bloggers/podcasters and I value what he writes highly.

But I disagree with him on this one. The problem with using Java for web application development was never one of too much choice. In fact, it was because of that choice that Java became a player in the server side market at all. Sun alone never had the answer to what was needed for server side development, instead the open source world stepped in and made incremental corrections.

Almost all large companies I have come across have some standards regarding the technology stack that they are using.

The main reason behind this is economy, that developers should be able to rotate between projects and that operations should only have to worry about a limited number of software products. Something like that anyway

However nice this seems, it never delivers on its promise. It is much like the Gantt charts - looks nice, promises a lot, delivers zilch. Not counting the enormous upgrade cost when the whole stack is upgraded after 20 years - COBOL anyone?

I read an article the other day about a surgeon who said that in order to stay a good surgeon, he had to perform operations on a regular basis. Which sounds quite reasonable right?

Ponder that the normal thing for experienced surgeons was to not take part in the actual operation. Instead, they analyze the patient and decide what should be done in great detail, creating diagrams explaining the situation.

Martin Fowler writes: “If you only try to provide the minimum, you end up with multiple clients duplicating code for common cases.”

Or one billion jakarta.commons packages

(Via Martin Fowler’s Bliki.)