Funny enough, I just submitted such a poll to java.net since there are certainly more average developers following it, than there are tracking the coin mailing-list. Personally I don't think language design should be a democratic endeavor exactly for the reasons outlined by Joe and Alex, things goes just a little bit deeper than most can fathom. What you *can* find out by asking the community however, is what they struggle with daily and what would excite them. And I should add that my definition of a community does not cover the JCP members who are not really interested in Java per se, but much more interested in profiting on their latest SOA vendor lock-in.
So as an engineer interested in improving my day-to-day environment I have only a few options 1) become a cubicle robot and not care about this stuff at all, 2) be a loudmouth and try to push what I feel is good taste in programming, 3) find another job where I can choose a stack that makes me feel productive and passionate again or 4) help in undermining official Java and put my faith in the grassroots of the community i.e. Lombok. Given the relatively mute blogosphere surrounding JDK7, I am probably not the only one contemplating these options. /Casper On 3 Sep., 22:47, Fabrizio Giudici <[email protected]> wrote: > Reinier Zwitserloot wrote: > > I'd also like to state my support for Jess Holle's very astute > > observation that the first serious attempt to build a fully specced, > > fully prototyped proposal (BGGA) got a rather lukewarm response from > > sun. The BGGA proposal didn't just have an excellent spec and > > prototype behind it, it has received more community support than any > > proposal I've _ever_ seen in the history of java. All that, and sun > > still doesn't care? > > I know I'm going to raise a can of worms :-) but there are some points > that have to be addressed here. It all depends by what "community" > means, but the fact that there are blogs praising a certain feature, or > even a lot of messages in a mailing list doesn't prove that the majority > of the "community" wants that. To be more precise, if you have a lot of > people interested in a given project, e.g. Lombok, which is an optional > tool for Java, everybody is happy: if you get 100, 1.000, 10.000, > 100.000 enthusiasts, your project will have a bright future, and the > rest of the Java users (who are millions) who don't know, don't care or > don't like it will still live happy. > > Things are different if one pretend that 1.000 or 10.000 people make a > decision to change Java that will affect everybody. My personal > experience is that the vast majority of my customers (I'm talking of > several firms from small to large) don't give a bit for closures (just > to make an example), don't feel they need it, don't feel they like it > and are neutral or negative with them. My personal experience with > forums or mailing lists of various human activities (not necessarily > technological ones) is that they might have thousands of subscribers, > while the traffic is lead by tens of them. Thus, any discussion made by > those tens of persons can't be deemed of representative of the whole > community. > > *** I don't think that neither blogs or mailing lists are true > representative of the reality out there (technological, political, or > what else). *** They only make more noise, but the standard rules for > democracy are still "one head, one vote", so they only count for > themselves. That's why, for instance, to elect a government blogs and > such can be thought as influential, but in the end you do count any > single vote. > > As I said, this has to do with how do you define community: people who > attend blogs, mailing lists and conferences, or the whole set of users. > Of course I reckon that there is a problem with the latter, as we can't > measure it. Neither I'm pretending that Sun was right in not accepting > BGGA because they allegedly know the wishes or the whole set of users. > Neither I can, of course, pretend that I or my customers are > representative of the majority. But even if we accept the former > definition of community, I think that before declaring that the > community wants something, we need some sort of poll that, while > shouldn't necessarily be as formal and controlled like an election poll, > must be decently structured. For instance, Java.Net polls are not good, > figure out if I think that generically quoting bloggers' enthusiasm is good. > > Given that, I'm not proposing to set up such a poll, because I don't > know how to set it up (and nobody says that a technical community is a > "democracy" in the strict sense - in fact, it isn't). A good half+ of my > customers don't even know or read Java.Net, DZone.com or JavaPosse or > attend a JUG, so I wouldn't be able to say how to reach and ask to > everybody. I'm only saying that in this situation, I'm all but > scandalized if Sun takes decisions such as not putting BGGA or other > stuff in the JDK. They can be technically wrong, but I don't think one > can prove they are deciding against the community will. > > -- > Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect, Project Manager > Tidalwave s.a.s. - "We make Java work. Everywhere." > weblogs.java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici -www.tidalwave.it/blog > [email protected] - mobile: +39 348.150.6941 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
