(two languages)
JAVA
I understand it is fairly easy, and that it can work wonders with all
those custom widgets.
But it was never supposed to be an application language. It was never
supposed to be anything more than a little helper to make web
programming easier. The foundations just aren't there.
You will know a JAVA app when you see too busy a page that is just too
slow.
I've been a victim of massive JAVA apps on more than one occasion.
Too frequently, the writers of the applications never even saw what
they were replacing. The philosophers directing the programs felt that
'contamination' might result.
Too true.
I was on a validation team for a huge project. My company spent lots of
money to fly me across the country multiple times to verify that all
was as it should be. The new program was supposed to be a functionally
identical,
complete replacement for a very complete, mature system. I didn't
expect it to look the same.
We used a tiny test database of information. When I asked about a
feature that was missing, our intermediaries had no clue what I was
talking about. (Why should they? They had never used to old software!)
They brought the team of programmers to talk to me. I showed them the
feature in the
old, still on-line system.
They broke into an excited east Indian conversation for several
minutes. When I got them to slow down and asked what they thought about
the feature, they asked "What feature? We were blown away about how
fast that system is and if we had any hope of matching it."
When they rolled out the app - one server set was to take care of 4 of
7
regions of the company. Within 3 months, they redeployed the app as a
twice beefed-up server system, with only one region, and it still was
not half the speed of the old system.
(Couple of years later ...) Times change. Tools mature. Java works. Your choice.
Oh, that other language? C .... something or other.
One could study his whole life and never know the best way to solve a
problem. If you try to look up a tough topic online, you may find that
there are many opinions, but few claims even by the 'experts' that
there is a best way to get to your goal. And a lot of advice about what
you should not do.
That kind of makes using it an art.
Artists live in too much pain. I have enough pain. I don't want more.