Hi Scott,
I agree with most of what you said, and I think everyone would have been
better off if the JSP process weren't as open. The more open the process,
the slower you are to deliver. But the one reason we _are_ using JSP here
is the fact that virtually every major application server has committed to
JSP support. Sure, there's nothing there yet, but then again, I wouldn't
build against a 0.92 spec either. And down the line, if you're expecting
any real volume in traffic, I (and much of the world) would stay away from
NT/ASP. If you're only targeting corporate intranets, ASP's probably fine.
There's a lot of excitement (and frustration) here about JSP. I imagine
that to be the case elsewhere. Once the spec _finally_ is released, I
fully expect things to get brighter fast.
-Ben
>Summary of your message: Product software has no value. Distribution, tech
>support and consulting have value, but writing software is worthless.
>
>Implication: No sane business will create software for JSP.
>
>Maybe you're right. But I want you to think hard about the secondary
>implications of JSP with no commercial support.
>
>Compare the market for JSP and ASP. Not the product, the market. ASP has
say
>100,000 developers? JSP has 1,000? Maybe? ASP has support from many
>development/editing tools. It has many web sites with tutorials and examples
>and huge libraries of code. It has several books and tutorials. ASP has
many
>consultants. It is available from ISPs. ISPs won't touch JSP, nor servlets,
>because there is still no solid deployment for them commercial or
>non-commercial.
>
>If you're a consultant, how valuable is your knowledge of JSP? Zero? Do you
>even bother putting it on your resume? ASP consultants brag about it on
their
>resume. ASP is valuable to consultants. JSP is close to worthless.
>
>If you're working in a larger company, how hard is it to convince management
>to use JSP?
>
>Why is JSP in severe trouble? In part because of spec problems. Mostly,
>though, because no sane business will spend any effort on JSP. That means no
>commercial-quality implementations (and Apache JServ is not commercial
>quality.) That means no technical support beyond this list. That means
>neither books, nor tutorials, nor consultancies.
>
>Let me give you two real, not hypothetical examples.
>
>The open source servlet runner, Apache JServ, is slow, it's very difficult to
>install, it's still in beta and it still missing the servlet 2.1 API. And
>servlets are much more mature than JSP. We've got a prototype which cuts the
>latency from 35ms to 11ms. (That's including the fixed 6ms Apache
>overhead.) I think we can make installation easy even for novices. Will you
>ever see it? No. Why? Because it's not worth our time to develop it. So
>you can wait and hope someone will volunteer to improve JServ. It may
>happen.
>
>Our primary product, Resin, quickly approaching beta, brings JavaScript to
>JSP. Even those of you who are Java hackers should see the value of making
>JSP available to non-Java programmers. The more people who use JSP, the more
>valuable your JSP experience is, and the easier it is to convince management
>or customers to let you use JSP.
>
>We're 90% convinced to drop JSP and adopt ASP. It's an easier sell. People
>who develop with ASP can then deploy on whatever server they want with our
>product and since it's in Java, can use Java components instead of COM if
they
>want.
>
>Why abandon JSP? Mostly because the market is small, the customers are
cheap,
>and it's not likely that it'll really take off, especially if it continues to
>discourages non-experts and non-Java scripts. Also the 1.0 spec is months
>late, incomplete, and all indications are that it is unfriendly to non-Java
>languages.
>
>I don't expect you to care about one tiny company's decision to abandon
>JSP support. Just decide for yourself if it's an exception or a symptom why
>JSP isn't receiving support.
>
>Scott Ferguson
>Caucho Technology
>
>p.s. The statement "what about making money from distributing computers,
>..., providing tech support, from consulting?" is the most asinine statement
>I've heard in months. You can also make money professional wrestling,
>flipping hamburgers, or pimping. If you value software development less than
>tech support, don't be surprised if no one jumps to write software for you.
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