> > Casper, this is your bright side. You are touching on the core issue that > genuinely concerns me and triggered my emotional posts: engaging > programming work versus the reality of most paid programming jobs. Exotic > programming language features are intellectually interesting but generate > few job positions. SharePoint integration/maintenance work is basically > completely devoid of anything intellectually interesting but generates lots > of salaried job positions. >
Wow Clay, looks like I struck a nerve there. As someone who's about the spearhead SharePoint integration at my org, I hope yop are wrong. Although I agree with your basic premise, that corporate data-processing with standards systems is dull, when seen from a bottom-up alpha-geek perspective, I also see it as an interesting opportunity to bring value and solve problems of interoperability. Whether that involves writing a LINQ provider, an ODATA backend etc. that is certainly not devoid of intellectual challenges. Most salaried programmer work is not remotely interesting. Typically > businesses don't hire programmers to do interesting new development. They > choose the interesting parts from off the shelf components and hire > programmers to handle implementation, integration, maintenance, and support. > > When businesses are hiring for mundane integration, support work, they > want to make the work as easy as possible, they want to be able to hire > from the widest pool as possible, and they want programmer personnel to be > as interchangeable as possible. That means reducing developer choice and > using a more streamlined toolset. Microsoft has been successful and given > this crowd what they want. Java tried to win this crowd with Java EE, but > never came close to what Microsoft could do. > > The veteran intellectual developer types want maximum choice and > flexibility. This is where Java really shines. This is why such a high > ratio of the more interesting libraries, concepts, and startups come out of > the Java ecosystem. > In the more entry level, ease of use camp, you find a high correlation > between those that prefer .NET, point-and-click-interfaces, Windows OS, and > Microsoft Office. > I can assure you, that is not a .NET aspect. Oracle's ADF framework and JDeveloper (we don't get much more official within the Java stack than this) is littered with point-n-click and XML which is utterly impossible to maintain afterward. After 10 years working primarily with Java, I've come to the conclusion that less is more. For productivity and maintainability in the Java world, it's essential to be conservative about choice of technology because it is often replaced by something better, deprecated altogether, inconsistent and complicated in integrating. Navigating this chaos is not for the faint of heart, startups can do this because they do not have existing business requirement or systems to keep running. Thus, the core problem with the Java ecosystem is that of versionability and scalability over time. > In the other more serious technology geek camp you find a high correlation > of those that prefer JVM, command line interfaces, UNIX, and LaTeX. > No doubt CS graduates bring along their own preference for tools, technologies and (software) religion/politics - often skewed towards the things you mention. However, one can also choose to adopt the view that a developers purpose is to solve business problems with the best tools available rather than spending time reinventing the wheel, flip-flopping between choices etc. I guess I'm extra sensitive about the Xamarin style Java/JVM/Dalvik > bashing, because I perceive it as a threat to my intellectual career > interests and a threat to be forced to conform to the more entry level mass > market technologies. > So because Xamarin is using C# (an open standard, syntactically superior to Java) implemented by one of the most famous active hackers today, it's entry-level and a threat to you? That sounds like the prejudice and typecasting I find to be the worst part of the Java community. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Java Posse" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/javaposse/-/ug-8y-fFo7AJ. 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.
