After the
Joel Spolsky presentation that launched IJTC there was a panel discussion which meant to explore all the future directions that Java as a platform might take. The participants were talking about the future in a kind of sad way and the discussion toured out to be mainly a never-ending stream of complaints. Basically people were concerned about:
- Java 6 is not implemented on Leopard
- mobile phone specs on the vendors web sites don't list Java as a feature, something like Java ready sticker
- lack of tools
- diversity of frameworks and their life-span uncertainty
- growing complexity of the language itself
- dynamic languages that from their perspective are taking over Java current and future believers
- etc.
One of the listeners asked how to anticipate the life-span of a given framework. The answer was that it's impossible, that's fine, and that his company needs to be more agile. Excuse me? If you build a house you don't want to change its foundation too often. As far as I know
Microsoft provides 10 years of support for every framework they release. The next interesting statement was that Java is developing itself quickly because it's community driven. I think that this is not true and the best example is C#. The first version of it was way behind Java at that time it was released. Nowadays C# is way ahead of Java and the main reason is that there are a few smart guys at
Microsoft who listen to developers but at the same time they are able to make quick decisions when it's needed. I love diversity but it looks like Java is going in so many different directions that even its believers are kind of lost. What is more, exploring (too)many directions at the same time always affects your velocity and you always have to find the right balance. I can not recall a single statement which would mention a framework/solution/approach which is a breakthrough and it will make the developers life much easier.
I might be wrong because I don't follow the Java world on daily basis but my overall impression was that both audience and guests were not really happy what they came up with. But there is a good chance that they weren't actually upset but simply tired :) because of the fact that the discussion finished around 10 pm. I hope that a few pints after the launch let them recharge the batteries because the conference itself looks interesting.
