10 ms·

Java EE

132 points by mcp_ 9y ago

adamstockdill 9y ago
Java EE 8 Hands On Lab.
nxc18 9y ago
How is this just happening now? Java is super popular in the open source and academic communities, but C# has been ahead of them since its start with an open specification, open implementations, and for the past few years, a full-throttle open source effort. What's going on?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- chrisseaton 9y ago
  Java had an open specification (if you mean freely available and accepting contributions), open implementations, and allowed open-source contributions, for years before C# did - I don't know what you're talking about. This post is just about JavaEE - a set of libraries for Java - being moved to GitHub.
- lovelearning 9y ago
  All of this used to be on a (very very slow horrible) repository site called "java.net". They moved everything to GitHub now. Similar to MS shutting down CodePlex and moving to GitHub.
- bad_user 9y ago
  On C# having had an incomplete ECMA specification always lagging behind and source code made available under an obscure, non-open-source, legally tainting license acting as a boobytrap for anything commercial DOES NOT count as open. Even now they are being disingenuous about license changes, witness for example the leadership of this project changing license from Apache 2.0 to MIT and being obtuse about the licensing of patents or about reasoning, not explaining clearly the drawbacks of the change: https://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp/issues/3440 https://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp/issues/3440 OpenJDK happened on May 8, 2007, that's 10 years ago and you've got companies like Red Hat and IBM collaborating on it. By comparison .NET Core was released 2016, so that's 9 years later. And the JCP might be a farce as far as standardisation efforts are concerned, but at least you've got multiple companies participating. I'm replying this because I'm getting tired of Microsoft's marketing campaigns on this forum. UPDATE: Btw I actually applaud Microsoft's open sourcing efforts, I see myself using .NET in the future and I'm actively using Visual Studio Code and TypeScript at the moment. They've got fine people there working on dev tools, they always had. But then I also see them engaging in what's basically racketeering, threatening Android phone makers with patents (i.e. if you can't innovate, litigate), having potential for becoming one of the largest patent trolls ever. And I also see them breaking user privacy in Windows 10. Therefore my view of them is balanced, as a large organization the left hand doesn't know what the right does, etc. I cannot love them and even though I may have forgiven them for their past attacks on Linux and the open web, I can't forget their past that easily. And before you mention Google, Apple, Facebook, or other media darlings, check my history to see that I'm consistently ranting about all of them and the malevolence of one does not excuse the rest. What I'm saying is that "Microsoft changed" messages make me feel nausea because it's been a clear marketing campaign and people fell for it. Let their actions speak, applaud and reward them when they do good, but don't put them on a pedestal and don't do marketing for them without getting paid for it.
  - staticelf 9y ago
    > I'm replying this because I'm getting tired of Microsoft's marketing campaigns on this forum. I just think you're simply underestimating how many people actually like .net and spreads the love by free will. :)
    - liesmarketing 9y ago
      they probably shouldn't lie in such transparent ways, then
      - hele7 9y ago
        Do you have sufficient proof to back your argument? Further, can you prove that they lie any more than others?
  - hele7 9y ago
    > OpenJDK happened on May 8, 2007, that's 10 years ago and you've got companies like Red Hat and IBM collaborating on it. By comparison .NET Core was released 2016, so that's 9 years later. You're comparing unequal things. OpenJDK was a community effort, while .NET Core is maintained primarily by Microsoft themselves. The correct comparison would be to .NET's community based alternative, which is Mono. Mono in turn had it's initial release in June 30, 2004, which is _13 years ago_, and 3 years before OpenJDK itself. Further, note that Oracle only open sourced Java a year after Microsoft did .NET Core. One might even argue that Oracle only did so _because_ of .NET Core. I'll note that I'm replying because I'm getting tired of Oracle's marketing campaigns on this forum.
    - dtech 9y ago
      > You're comparing unequal things. OpenJDK was a community effort > The correct comparison would be to .NET's community based alternative, which is Mono. This is disingenuous at best. OpenJDK was started with a huge codebase from the existing Sun JDK at the time, similar to how .Net core was started with with a Microsoft codebase. Meanwhile Mono had to be written from scratch and was a far cry from being somewhat compatible for years after it started (e.g. capable of running a Visual Studio compiled .NET GUI program) > Further, note that Oracle only open sourced Java a year after Microsoft did .NET Core I'm not sure what you mean by "open source Java" in this context. The Java Community Process was started in 1998, and as said OpenJDK started in 2007. Java EE being open sourced like now would be much more comparable to Microsoft releasing something like Windows Presentation Foundation as open source, as it's a oft-used part of .NET but not part of the language per se.
- runako 9y ago
  > Java is super popular in the open source and academic communities Don't forget the business community. To a first order approximation, most programmers who get paid to write code work in either C#/.NET or Java. Everything else is a relatively small minority of paid development work.
  - rbanffy 9y ago
    Java is the 21st century COBOL. And no, I mean it as a compliment. It takes a colossal amount of effort to become a de facto standard.
    - astrodust 9y ago
      Note to Java kids today: When you're 60 your skills will be in demand. Don't get too rusty!
- g051051 9y ago
  You're mistaking Microsoft's purely reactive strategy to something like real planning and commitment to open source. MSFT has been pushing into that area (sort of) recently because they kept getting their lunch stolen by all of the open source technologies out there. Do you think it was anything but the most incredible terror and desperation that drove them to add a Linux subsystem to Windows? To open source their "crown jewel" of .NET? To support Linux on Azure? To make Visual Studio almost entirely free? To adopt Electron as the base for VS Code? To ditch TFS for GitHub? Edit: Corrected to be more precise Chromium vs. Electron.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    As much as I like .NET, the truth is that they are loosing mindshare among new generations. "Microsoft’s Open Source Developer Journey" https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Visual-Studio/Live-2017/Keynote https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Visual-Studio/Live-2017/Key...
    - holydude 9y ago
      They are but they are trying to adapt. .NET core is an extremely aggressive way for them to attract the new generation. It's funny because the new generations still use Windows to develop on and Linux to deploy to and no one is denying this. But Microsoft somehow is accepting this shift and is trying to bring its stack on Linux and also Linux on Windows. I think Microsoft is smart,they really realized unlike Oracle and others that sometimes you cannot people force to use or do whatever you think is the best (looking at you Oracle,IBM,Apple) and literally giving people what they want is the best thing you can do to turn the tides.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        Yes, Microsoft is pulling an IBM, because they are fully aware that if they don't change, long term it will make them suffer really bad.
    - bdcravens 9y ago
      Interestingly, I'm seeing VS Code alot these days amongst "new generation" developers.
- ghrifter 9y ago
  Are you still in school, new to the industry, or both?
garblegarble 9y ago
What really frustrates me about how (I assume Oracle) handled this transition away from java.net is that all the issue links just lead to the same "java.net is closed" page, they didn't bother to redirect them to the github issues pages (the issue IDs are the same from what I've seen). I run into this issue often enough that I've been tempted to write a userscript to translate the java.net links automatically... doesn't do anything about all the broken documentation links though :(
- beerbajay 9y ago
  Yep. The closure of java.net broke jvisualvm for me; none of the in-application plugin links work. Instead you have to go find the new jvisualvm page and download it separately.
nilved 9y ago
Needs context
- netule 9y ago
  I agree; vague title. What's the significance of this submission?
myth_drannon 9y ago
Looking at the people who belong to this organization, I get the feeling that the majority of the JavaEE development was outsourced to India.
- geodel 9y ago
  Isn't the whole J2EE business evolved for outsourcing IT work?
  - devonkim 9y ago
    J2EE was designed for an era when big, monolithic entities were creating most of the production-grade software out there, SMP hardware was extremely expensive and capital-intensive, and open source software was largely considered a joke by those with the buying decisions. It made sense to try to target large entities that have developed decades of abstractions supposedly meant to reflect how complex (perhaps complected?) their business layer logic is and that their software architecture should be tightly coupled to it as such. J2EE became a target for offshore software projects primarily because of its userbase being organizations that are fundamentally not software companies and that are constantly trying to cut costs while being unable to migrate off these systems quickly simply due to their sheer organizational inertia. These companies culturally haven't scaled based upon much more than bodies (a typical enterprise M&A is fundamentally more bodies and access to specific customer bodies rather than a strategic technology play given how slow M&A works in practice), and these are oftentimes the companies you see in newspapers that are experiencing business difficulties - what skilled, talented developers want to stake their careers working on software used only by a community that is in a multi-decade crisis? Even if you spend a lot though, outcomes are not necessarily great either. US DoD is a great example of tons of J2EE on their backends with unremarkable outcomes despite having spent perhaps more dollars on software engineering effort than probably Google has in the past 30 years cumulatively (where the money goes is another topic). It's tough problems as a large company that thought they were getting ahead of the technology curve back in the 90s and are now the dinosaurs and fossils.
    - hildaman 9y ago
googletazer 9y ago
Java EE is trash compared to Spring/Play Framework.
geodel 9y ago
By this Oracle now admits in times of Cloud, docker containers etc Java EE is relic of past and not of much relevance. Surprisingly though, Spring with its habit of adding a thick layer of crap over any technology is doing okay and lot of people seem to like it.
- insomniacity 9y ago
  Tell me more about Spring - I know people who use it but they seem to like it?
tim333 9y ago
As someone confused what this was about, it seems: >Oracle said this week it plans to transfer management of the Java EE project to an open-source foundation, such as Apache or Eclipse. (Aug 19) https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/oracle-wants-to-give-java-ee-to-the-open-source-community/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/oracle-want...
- kbenson 9y ago
  So Oracle fired off almost all the rest of the Solaris engineers, they are moving Java out of house, what's left from the original Sun purchase? SPARC? I see they still sell SPARC servers, but without confirmation from someone that they've somehow kept competitive with Intel (which they were having problems doing over a decade ago), I'm wondering if this is just a cash grab from people that don't know what they're getting, or are somehow forced to run software precompiled for SPARC (although gouging customers like that would fit my preconception of Oracle, accurate or not)..
  - MikeTheGreat 9y ago
    Sun owned MySQL at the time; Oracle bought them for that. Acquiring all the rest of the Sun stuff (SPARC, Solaris, Java, StarOffice, VirtualBox, etc) was a side-effect of the MySQL acquisition.
    - kbenson 9y ago
      That is incredibly depressing to think about on many levels.
  - cname 9y ago
    Java EE != Java
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - ghettoimp 9y ago
sgt 9y ago
My unit (previously Java EE focused) has since moved onto vert.x for enterprise Java development. It's worth checking out.
- slackingoff2017 9y ago
  +1 for vert.x it's based on the venerable Netty project and has extremely high performance, about as close to C as you can get besides maybe Golang Also DropWizard is pretty quick and offers a good combo of features. Spring is the most feature complete, it's a shame it's so slow in comparison
trapperkeeper74 9y ago
Not a huge surprise because Oracle is technology's Donald Trump. Depend on anything of theirs at your/your company's own peril.
- RickJWag 9y ago
  What would the Hillary Clinton of software companies be? - Loses easy wins, blames everybody else - Attacks minorities who point out her people are abusers - 'Screws up everything with hubris' to quote Colin Powell What did I miss?
  - apoorvkumar 9y ago
    I never quite understood why a mention of Donald Trump needs to have a comparison of Hillary Clinton along side - and for that reason anyone? He is a vile and despicable human being and the fact that a big fraction of US voted for him doesn't change the fact. So we can criticise and ridicule him at every step without having to qualify it by mentioning every disliked person in history of humanity.
    - seabird 9y ago
      Because when it came down to it, the choice was between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Clinton is also a vile and despicable human being, and the fact that a big fraction of the US didn't like her opponent doesn't change that fact. We can criticise and ridicule her at every step without having to qualify it by mentioning that somebody is subjectively "worse." It's not "open season, but only for Trump" just because you like Clinton better.
      - apoorvkumar 9y ago
        > just because you like Clinton better. Upvote for illustrating my point. In your universe there are 2 mutually exclusive and exhaustive groups - Trump people and Clinton people. I couldn't care less about Clinton. Go ahead and make fun of her all you want. My issue is with coupling of the personalities. When you retort to a comment about Trump with the 'oh but Clinton' defence you're trying (poorly) to take away legitimacy of individual criticism. 'When it came down to it' - well it comes down everyday. You have an option to not defend an immoral human (very objectively immoral, by the most basic of human moralities accepted in most civilized cultures).

132 points by mcp_ 9y ago

Java EE 8 Hands On Lab.

How is this just happening now? Java is super popular in the open source and academic communities, but C# has been ahead of them since its start with an open specification, open implementations, and for the past few years, a full-throttle open source effort. What's going on?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
chrisseaton 9y ago
Java had an open specification (if you mean freely available and accepting contributions), open implementations, and allowed open-source contributions, for years before C# did - I don't know what you're talking about. This post is just about JavaEE - a set of libraries for Java - being moved to GitHub.
lovelearning 9y ago
All of this used to be on a (very very slow horrible) repository site called "java.net". They moved everything to GitHub now. Similar to MS shutting down CodePlex and moving to GitHub.
bad_user 9y ago
On C# having had an incomplete ECMA specification always lagging behind and source code made available under an obscure, non-open-source, legally tainting license acting as a boobytrap for anything commercial DOES NOT count as open. Even now they are being disingenuous about license changes, witness for example the leadership of this project changing license from Apache 2.0 to MIT and being obtuse about the licensing of patents or about reasoning, not explaining clearly the drawbacks of the change: https://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp/issues/3440 https://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp/issues/3440 OpenJDK happened on May 8, 2007, that's 10 years ago and you've got companies like Red Hat and IBM collaborating on it. By comparison .NET Core was released 2016, so that's 9 years later. And the JCP might be a farce as far as standardisation efforts are concerned, but at least you've got multiple companies participating. I'm replying this because I'm getting tired of Microsoft's marketing campaigns on this forum. UPDATE: Btw I actually applaud Microsoft's open sourcing efforts, I see myself using .NET in the future and I'm actively using Visual Studio Code and TypeScript at the moment. They've got fine people there working on dev tools, they always had. But then I also see them engaging in what's basically racketeering, threatening Android phone makers with patents (i.e. if you can't innovate, litigate), having potential for becoming one of the largest patent trolls ever. And I also see them breaking user privacy in Windows 10. Therefore my view of them is balanced, as a large organization the left hand doesn't know what the right does, etc. I cannot love them and even though I may have forgiven them for their past attacks on Linux and the open web, I can't forget their past that easily. And before you mention Google, Apple, Facebook, or other media darlings, check my history to see that I'm consistently ranting about all of them and the malevolence of one does not excuse the rest. What I'm saying is that "Microsoft changed" messages make me feel nausea because it's been a clear marketing campaign and people fell for it. Let their actions speak, applaud and reward them when they do good, but don't put them on a pedestal and don't do marketing for them without getting paid for it.
- staticelf 9y ago
  > I'm replying this because I'm getting tired of Microsoft's marketing campaigns on this forum. I just think you're simply underestimating how many people actually like .net and spreads the love by free will. :)
  - liesmarketing 9y ago
    they probably shouldn't lie in such transparent ways, then
    - hele7 9y ago
      Do you have sufficient proof to back your argument? Further, can you prove that they lie any more than others?
- hele7 9y ago
  > OpenJDK happened on May 8, 2007, that's 10 years ago and you've got companies like Red Hat and IBM collaborating on it. By comparison .NET Core was released 2016, so that's 9 years later. You're comparing unequal things. OpenJDK was a community effort, while .NET Core is maintained primarily by Microsoft themselves. The correct comparison would be to .NET's community based alternative, which is Mono. Mono in turn had it's initial release in June 30, 2004, which is _13 years ago_, and 3 years before OpenJDK itself. Further, note that Oracle only open sourced Java a year after Microsoft did .NET Core. One might even argue that Oracle only did so _because_ of .NET Core. I'll note that I'm replying because I'm getting tired of Oracle's marketing campaigns on this forum.
  - dtech 9y ago
    > You're comparing unequal things. OpenJDK was a community effort > The correct comparison would be to .NET's community based alternative, which is Mono. This is disingenuous at best. OpenJDK was started with a huge codebase from the existing Sun JDK at the time, similar to how .Net core was started with with a Microsoft codebase. Meanwhile Mono had to be written from scratch and was a far cry from being somewhat compatible for years after it started (e.g. capable of running a Visual Studio compiled .NET GUI program) > Further, note that Oracle only open sourced Java a year after Microsoft did .NET Core I'm not sure what you mean by "open source Java" in this context. The Java Community Process was started in 1998, and as said OpenJDK started in 2007. Java EE being open sourced like now would be much more comparable to Microsoft releasing something like Windows Presentation Foundation as open source, as it's a oft-used part of .NET but not part of the language per se.
runako 9y ago
> Java is super popular in the open source and academic communities Don't forget the business community. To a first order approximation, most programmers who get paid to write code work in either C#/.NET or Java. Everything else is a relatively small minority of paid development work.
- rbanffy 9y ago
  Java is the 21st century COBOL. And no, I mean it as a compliment. It takes a colossal amount of effort to become a de facto standard.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    Note to Java kids today: When you're 60 your skills will be in demand. Don't get too rusty!
g051051 9y ago
You're mistaking Microsoft's purely reactive strategy to something like real planning and commitment to open source. MSFT has been pushing into that area (sort of) recently because they kept getting their lunch stolen by all of the open source technologies out there. Do you think it was anything but the most incredible terror and desperation that drove them to add a Linux subsystem to Windows? To open source their "crown jewel" of .NET? To support Linux on Azure? To make Visual Studio almost entirely free? To adopt Electron as the base for VS Code? To ditch TFS for GitHub? Edit: Corrected to be more precise Chromium vs. Electron.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  As much as I like .NET, the truth is that they are loosing mindshare among new generations. "Microsoft’s Open Source Developer Journey" https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Visual-Studio/Live-2017/Keynote https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Visual-Studio/Live-2017/Key...
  - holydude 9y ago
    They are but they are trying to adapt. .NET core is an extremely aggressive way for them to attract the new generation. It's funny because the new generations still use Windows to develop on and Linux to deploy to and no one is denying this. But Microsoft somehow is accepting this shift and is trying to bring its stack on Linux and also Linux on Windows. I think Microsoft is smart,they really realized unlike Oracle and others that sometimes you cannot people force to use or do whatever you think is the best (looking at you Oracle,IBM,Apple) and literally giving people what they want is the best thing you can do to turn the tides.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Yes, Microsoft is pulling an IBM, because they are fully aware that if they don't change, long term it will make them suffer really bad.
  - bdcravens 9y ago
    Interestingly, I'm seeing VS Code alot these days amongst "new generation" developers.
ghrifter 9y ago
Are you still in school, new to the industry, or both?

garblegarble 9y ago

What really frustrates me about how (I assume Oracle) handled this transition away from java.net is that all the issue links just lead to the same "java.net is closed" page, they didn't bother to redirect them to the github issues pages (the issue IDs are the same from what I've seen). I run into this issue often enough that I've been tempted to write a userscript to translate the java.net links automatically... doesn't do anything about all the broken documentation links though :(

beerbajay 9y ago
Yep. The closure of java.net broke jvisualvm for me; none of the in-application plugin links work. Instead you have to go find the new jvisualvm page and download it separately.

nilved 9y ago

Needs context

netule 9y ago
I agree; vague title. What's the significance of this submission?

myth_drannon 9y ago

Looking at the people who belong to this organization, I get the feeling that the majority of the JavaEE development was outsourced to India.

geodel 9y ago
Isn't the whole J2EE business evolved for outsourcing IT work?
- devonkim 9y ago
  J2EE was designed for an era when big, monolithic entities were creating most of the production-grade software out there, SMP hardware was extremely expensive and capital-intensive, and open source software was largely considered a joke by those with the buying decisions. It made sense to try to target large entities that have developed decades of abstractions supposedly meant to reflect how complex (perhaps complected?) their business layer logic is and that their software architecture should be tightly coupled to it as such. J2EE became a target for offshore software projects primarily because of its userbase being organizations that are fundamentally not software companies and that are constantly trying to cut costs while being unable to migrate off these systems quickly simply due to their sheer organizational inertia. These companies culturally haven't scaled based upon much more than bodies (a typical enterprise M&A is fundamentally more bodies and access to specific customer bodies rather than a strategic technology play given how slow M&A works in practice), and these are oftentimes the companies you see in newspapers that are experiencing business difficulties - what skilled, talented developers want to stake their careers working on software used only by a community that is in a multi-decade crisis? Even if you spend a lot though, outcomes are not necessarily great either. US DoD is a great example of tons of J2EE on their backends with unremarkable outcomes despite having spent perhaps more dollars on software engineering effort than probably Google has in the past 30 years cumulatively (where the money goes is another topic). It's tough problems as a large company that thought they were getting ahead of the technology curve back in the 90s and are now the dinosaurs and fossils.
  - hildaman 9y ago

googletazer 9y ago

Java EE is trash compared to Spring/Play Framework.

geodel 9y ago

By this Oracle now admits in times of Cloud, docker containers etc Java EE is relic of past and not of much relevance. Surprisingly though, Spring with its habit of adding a thick layer of crap over any technology is doing okay and lot of people seem to like it.

insomniacity 9y ago
Tell me more about Spring - I know people who use it but they seem to like it?

tim333 9y ago

As someone confused what this was about, it seems: >Oracle said this week it plans to transfer management of the Java EE project to an open-source foundation, such as Apache or Eclipse. (Aug 19) https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/oracle-wants-to-give-java-ee-to-the-open-source-community/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/oracle-want...

kbenson 9y ago
So Oracle fired off almost all the rest of the Solaris engineers, they are moving Java out of house, what's left from the original Sun purchase? SPARC? I see they still sell SPARC servers, but without confirmation from someone that they've somehow kept competitive with Intel (which they were having problems doing over a decade ago), I'm wondering if this is just a cash grab from people that don't know what they're getting, or are somehow forced to run software precompiled for SPARC (although gouging customers like that would fit my preconception of Oracle, accurate or not)..
- MikeTheGreat 9y ago
  Sun owned MySQL at the time; Oracle bought them for that. Acquiring all the rest of the Sun stuff (SPARC, Solaris, Java, StarOffice, VirtualBox, etc) was a side-effect of the MySQL acquisition.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    That is incredibly depressing to think about on many levels.
- cname 9y ago
  Java EE != Java
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- ghettoimp 9y ago

sgt 9y ago

My unit (previously Java EE focused) has since moved onto vert.x for enterprise Java development. It's worth checking out.

slackingoff2017 9y ago
+1 for vert.x it's based on the venerable Netty project and has extremely high performance, about as close to C as you can get besides maybe Golang Also DropWizard is pretty quick and offers a good combo of features. Spring is the most feature complete, it's a shame it's so slow in comparison

trapperkeeper74 9y ago

Not a huge surprise because Oracle is technology's Donald Trump. Depend on anything of theirs at your/your company's own peril.

RickJWag 9y ago
What would the Hillary Clinton of software companies be? - Loses easy wins, blames everybody else - Attacks minorities who point out her people are abusers - 'Screws up everything with hubris' to quote Colin Powell What did I miss?
- apoorvkumar 9y ago
  I never quite understood why a mention of Donald Trump needs to have a comparison of Hillary Clinton along side - and for that reason anyone? He is a vile and despicable human being and the fact that a big fraction of US voted for him doesn't change the fact. So we can criticise and ridicule him at every step without having to qualify it by mentioning every disliked person in history of humanity.
  - seabird 9y ago
    Because when it came down to it, the choice was between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Clinton is also a vile and despicable human being, and the fact that a big fraction of the US didn't like her opponent doesn't change that fact. We can criticise and ridicule her at every step without having to qualify it by mentioning that somebody is subjectively "worse." It's not "open season, but only for Trump" just because you like Clinton better.
    - apoorvkumar 9y ago
      > just because you like Clinton better. Upvote for illustrating my point. In your universe there are 2 mutually exclusive and exhaustive groups - Trump people and Clinton people. I couldn't care less about Clinton. Go ahead and make fun of her all you want. My issue is with coupling of the personalities. When you retort to a comment about Trump with the 'oh but Clinton' defence you're trying (poorly) to take away legitimacy of individual criticism. 'When it came down to it' - well it comes down everyday. You have an option to not defend an immoral human (very objectively immoral, by the most basic of human moralities accepted in most civilized cultures).