The Grey Lens Man sure can put the truths about Java in writing. In his article The Book Of JOSH: Scala In The Enterprise he provides a few clearsighted truths about Java before describing the cornerstones of his new architecture: JSON, OSGi, HTTP and Scala (JOSH)
I’m almost touched to tears when recognizing truths like this one:
Java is the Brier Rabbit of IT. Once touched you can’t let go. Its simplistic enough to be inadequate in almost every situation. The commercial world just loves this aspect of Java as they exploit revenue streams from filling these gaps via endless Frameworks, Patterns, APIs, Annotations, IDEs and Toolsets.
The dirty secret of course is 25 – 50% of all of it is pure overhead, without direct value, but necessary to overcome the inherent limitations of Java.
On the other hand, the upside of Java for enterprise IT is pretty obvious. Any problem you might have can be solved with money and armies of plug and play bodies and you get mountains of buzz material for those presentations.
You simply can’t deny that he is right in writing:
… if you seen the proposed syntax for closures, well its readily apparent, Java’s elastic modulus has been exceeded. A crippled language has been fast marched evolved into a broken language.
Fortunately there is light at the end of the tunnel:
But bottom line, enterprise Java developers can transition to Scala. I know this, because I’ve directly observed it.
Give me a JOSH project to work on, now!