Martin Wildam wrote: [...] > On 9 Jul., 01:55, Peter Becker <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Usually >> questions like "do we use Wicket or JSF as web-framework?" has an answer >> along the lines of "use our internal, Struts-based one". "You want to >> use an OSS library? Only if it is in the list of libraries we allow (or >> you make a bloody good business case so we put your project into the >> status of a pilot for the library)." >> [...], but the Java space not only gives these organizations the >> freedom to adapt more, it also means that all these guys fiddling with >> the new toys might actually produce something that might be worthy as >> part of the new standards in a few years time. >> > > Yes, while this makes sense in big companies on one hand, it also > holds back innovative new approaches on the other... > I think it can be a good strategy for a large enterprise to let others innovate. If IT is not your business, chances are you are better off letting others experiment first. You want to keep an eye on what's happening, but you don't want to let it happen inside your organization. >> The MS world doesn't seem >> to have this bottom-up approach as lively. It is there to some extent, >> but Java's strength is that there is so much happening that you may or >> may not follow. If you are a large enough organization, then you can >> easily afford some staff to watch the space and try to figure out which >> new technologies suit you and when. >> > > I see a strong focus of the Java community on the real big companies, > what about the large amount of smaller ones? > > In my particular case, I am going to put more effort now into > evaluating different libraries and frameworks what fit best for the > major part of my future projects (which of course is also somehow a > look into the glass sphere) and then I will go with that for the most > projects. Fortunately for our customers the most important thing is > that the software is working and reliable and they do not ask that > much what's used in there. They might be happy if it's Java, because > it's a well known thing and not something that only a few guys in the > world know. Our customers usually do not have enough technical > knowledge to write policies about particular frameworks that should be > used or should be avoided. So I have a certain amount of freedom to > choose the used technologies according to what I think is the best. > And this is my responsibility - choosing "good" technologies.. > I think it is important to remember that "good" should mean "good enough". You can spend forever looking for the perfect web framework, but that'll take you way past that magic point of diminishing returns.
The Paradox of Choice says that you'll feel guilty about not having chosen the perfect one anyway -- whatever you pick you can probably identify something better in one of the other choices and that will make you wonder if that other choice would have been better over all. That approach of thinking might be common, but is futile. Pick one and don't look back for two or three years. It's like buying gadgets: you better not look at the price of what you bought afterwards and don't check out the next model -- it'll just make you feel bad ;-) Javaland has a lotter to offer to make big things with small efforts. I think the language is pretty crusty, but the plethora of tools is what keeps me. Just as an example: http://www.tockit.org/docco is written mostly by me as a little side project. It reads PDF, various MS Office formats, XML, HTML and others, it exports PNG, JPG, PDF and SVG. All documents are full-text indexed. Nothing of that functionality I wrote, I just integrated it. All I got in form of OSS libraries with suitable licences. That project is not commercial, but most of the libraries I used allow commercial use. That's where you get the head start in Java: so much free stuff to build upon and a culture of enhancing it collaboratively. Submitting bugs for libraries is actually something I enjoy doing since my feedback tends to be appreciated. In MS land it seems you only annoy people by submitting bugs unless you have special channels to use. Peter --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
