4 ms·

ThoughtWorks Technology Radar – July 2014 [pdf]

57 points by pagade 12y ago

inzax 12y ago
As shown on https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hacker-News/1558365107716690 https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hacker-News/1558365107716690
alexatkeplar 12y ago
I believe this is the third Radar in a row with Snowplow (https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow) on it - really stoked about that. I liked the reference to "Scala, the good parts" too.
- vadivlkumar 12y ago
  "Scala, good parts" - is classic mentioning in that pdf. I couldnt agree more on that. As a startup, we had burnt ours several times with the mix of people who had "scala-eye" and dont.
calebm 12y ago
I really think Docker should be more toward the center of the radar.
- twchad 12y ago
  In six months, since the Jan radar, it went from Assess to Trial, so that's a pretty rapid advance.
rubiquity 12y ago
Nice to see some tools that I've really enjoyed using lately. Docker, Packer and Ansible.
tdicola 12y ago
Wow that is a really high quality and nice list of interesting technology trends. Saw some very interesting service related tools that I want to look at it in more details. Thanks!
tieTYT 12y ago
I'd love to be using Java 8 but I can't because we deploy to an app server. The latest version of the app server has some critical bugs that prevent us from upgrading and we can't use Java 8 until we upgrade. We also can't switch to a different app server because the app server dictates which implementation of JPA you use and we wrote a lot of code tied to the implementation. This makes me wonder if Java EE app servers have ever been marked as "Hold" on any of the previous ThoughtWorks Tech Radars. I certainly wouldn't recommend them.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  The enterprise loves J2EE, given the tooling they provide to manage resources, application deployment and monitor usage. For them to go on hold, Java needs to go on hold on the enterprise. At least on context of the enterprise, I very much doubt they will ever go away. Only as a side effect of the said companies replacing languages. Just like CORBA only went away, as the same type of companies moved from C++ to Java/.NET ecosystems.
- jiraaya 12y ago
  I would think that such app servers would fall under the "the big enterprise solutions" that is "on hold" in this radar.
- monstermonster 12y ago
  Java EE 7 web profile is pretty light. If you consider they put JSF on hold then it points to other bits of Java EE that are probably persistent: Java EE Web profile, hibernate (via JPA), JAX-RS. That's a pretty good stack. No JSF, servlets, JSP or EJB and it's all good. As for Java 8 and containers, what are your issues? Just interested.
- needusername 12y ago
  Stories like this really make the case for open source app servers for me. The breadth of functionality they offer is so wide that when something does go wrong not only is it way easier to debug the issue and find out whether your code or the application server is at fault but also once you found the issue you can actually fix it yourself. We run a custom patch set against our application server (which we contribute upstream) and I couldn't imagine using a closed source app server. We have other teams that work with closed source app servers and they really envy us.
fuzzythinker 12y ago
What is vumi? Google top 2 results: vumi.org - mobile phone-based voter registration system. github.com/praekelt/vumi - SMS messaging engine, active, but 164 stars only, no where near the other "adapt" platform of Hadoop 2.0's popularity.
- mikeyouse 12y ago
  Yep, it's the Vumi.org one -- they tweeted that it was great to see themselves moving up ThoughtWorks radar; https://twitter.com/vumiapp/status/430605363360960512 https://twitter.com/vumiapp/status/430605363360960512 But ThoughtWorks describes them a bit different than your synopsis: > Vumi facilitates SMS, IM and USSD interactions between companies and their clients, health services and their patients, governments and citzens, and more. Vumi integrates with telcos and allows you to build apps on top of it easily. You only have to pay for carrier charges.
patcon 12y ago
For those who hate PDF's, their actual website is pretty nice: http://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/platforms http://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/platforms
clockwerx 12y ago
Hah. Worked with ThoughtWorks for a year as a client on a particular project, and fought tooth and nail for many of the things highlighted here (Postgres, living style sheets). Liking this vindicated feeling right now
zerr 12y ago
Can anybody comment what's special about ThoughtWorks besides that one of its founders had published some popular books? Isn't it just yet another CRUD app dev shop?
- jiraaya 12y ago
  Disclosure: An ex-employee who loves the organization. CRUD is a very generic label that could be applied to many interesting apps. I could classify Facebook as CRUD, but that does not mean that it is a seriously exciting system from an engineering perspective. There are a gazillion factors that make large systems interesting and at TW I have had opportunity to work on what I thought were interesting systems (though obviously not at the scale of Facebook) The single most important thing that I consider special about TW is their Social Impact Program http://www.thoughtworks.com/social-impact http://www.thoughtworks.com/social-impact. Crux of the story. Whether an organization is special or not is a multi-dimensional question subjective to individual perceptions.
- monstermonster 12y ago
  No they're not. I've worked with them. They are pretty good at turning around typical enterprise tech platforms that are in trouble. I'm not talking about CRUD stuff but heavy integration and workflow stuff with hundreds to thousands of tables that scales to thousands of concurrent users. They know the tech very well and know how to get from A to B cheaply which is incredibly difficult. They know how to organise large teams as well and have a good tech relationship with a lot of vendors which is really important. Not joking but what we threw at them had a codebase that would scare a lot of people and they sucked it up and spat it out in good shape and they did the same with the team too. As for Fowler, the analysis and formal descriptions he wrote up for PoEEA are rather good. Read the book at least once. You'll understand why things like hibernate were written and what problems they solve.
barsoap 12y ago
Datensparsamkeit under "assess"? As in "Let's assess whether we'd like to follow the law"?
- jonnyleroy 12y ago
  ;-) More, assess whether to apply the approaches outlined in the German legislative framework to other jurisdictions, e.g. the US. Could be both a risk mitigator and a market differentiator.

57 points by pagade 12y ago

inzax 12y ago

As shown on https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hacker-News/1558365107716690 https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hacker-News/1558365107716690

alexatkeplar 12y ago

I believe this is the third Radar in a row with Snowplow (https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow) on it - really stoked about that. I liked the reference to "Scala, the good parts" too.

vadivlkumar 12y ago
"Scala, good parts" - is classic mentioning in that pdf. I couldnt agree more on that. As a startup, we had burnt ours several times with the mix of people who had "scala-eye" and dont.

calebm 12y ago

I really think Docker should be more toward the center of the radar.

twchad 12y ago
In six months, since the Jan radar, it went from Assess to Trial, so that's a pretty rapid advance.

rubiquity 12y ago

Nice to see some tools that I've really enjoyed using lately. Docker, Packer and Ansible.

tdicola 12y ago

Wow that is a really high quality and nice list of interesting technology trends. Saw some very interesting service related tools that I want to look at it in more details. Thanks!

tieTYT 12y ago

I'd love to be using Java 8 but I can't because we deploy to an app server. The latest version of the app server has some critical bugs that prevent us from upgrading and we can't use Java 8 until we upgrade. We also can't switch to a different app server because the app server dictates which implementation of JPA you use and we wrote a lot of code tied to the implementation. This makes me wonder if Java EE app servers have ever been marked as "Hold" on any of the previous ThoughtWorks Tech Radars. I certainly wouldn't recommend them.

pjmlp 12y ago
The enterprise loves J2EE, given the tooling they provide to manage resources, application deployment and monitor usage. For them to go on hold, Java needs to go on hold on the enterprise. At least on context of the enterprise, I very much doubt they will ever go away. Only as a side effect of the said companies replacing languages. Just like CORBA only went away, as the same type of companies moved from C++ to Java/.NET ecosystems.
jiraaya 12y ago
I would think that such app servers would fall under the "the big enterprise solutions" that is "on hold" in this radar.
monstermonster 12y ago
Java EE 7 web profile is pretty light. If you consider they put JSF on hold then it points to other bits of Java EE that are probably persistent: Java EE Web profile, hibernate (via JPA), JAX-RS. That's a pretty good stack. No JSF, servlets, JSP or EJB and it's all good. As for Java 8 and containers, what are your issues? Just interested.
needusername 12y ago
Stories like this really make the case for open source app servers for me. The breadth of functionality they offer is so wide that when something does go wrong not only is it way easier to debug the issue and find out whether your code or the application server is at fault but also once you found the issue you can actually fix it yourself. We run a custom patch set against our application server (which we contribute upstream) and I couldn't imagine using a closed source app server. We have other teams that work with closed source app servers and they really envy us.

fuzzythinker 12y ago

What is vumi? Google top 2 results: vumi.org - mobile phone-based voter registration system. github.com/praekelt/vumi - SMS messaging engine, active, but 164 stars only, no where near the other "adapt" platform of Hadoop 2.0's popularity.

mikeyouse 12y ago
Yep, it's the Vumi.org one -- they tweeted that it was great to see themselves moving up ThoughtWorks radar; https://twitter.com/vumiapp/status/430605363360960512 https://twitter.com/vumiapp/status/430605363360960512 But ThoughtWorks describes them a bit different than your synopsis: > Vumi facilitates SMS, IM and USSD interactions between companies and their clients, health services and their patients, governments and citzens, and more. Vumi integrates with telcos and allows you to build apps on top of it easily. You only have to pay for carrier charges.

patcon 12y ago

For those who hate PDF's, their actual website is pretty nice: http://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/platforms http://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/platforms

clockwerx 12y ago

Hah. Worked with ThoughtWorks for a year as a client on a particular project, and fought tooth and nail for many of the things highlighted here (Postgres, living style sheets). Liking this vindicated feeling right now

zerr 12y ago

Can anybody comment what's special about ThoughtWorks besides that one of its founders had published some popular books? Isn't it just yet another CRUD app dev shop?

jiraaya 12y ago
Disclosure: An ex-employee who loves the organization. CRUD is a very generic label that could be applied to many interesting apps. I could classify Facebook as CRUD, but that does not mean that it is a seriously exciting system from an engineering perspective. There are a gazillion factors that make large systems interesting and at TW I have had opportunity to work on what I thought were interesting systems (though obviously not at the scale of Facebook) The single most important thing that I consider special about TW is their Social Impact Program http://www.thoughtworks.com/social-impact http://www.thoughtworks.com/social-impact. Crux of the story. Whether an organization is special or not is a multi-dimensional question subjective to individual perceptions.
monstermonster 12y ago
No they're not. I've worked with them. They are pretty good at turning around typical enterprise tech platforms that are in trouble. I'm not talking about CRUD stuff but heavy integration and workflow stuff with hundreds to thousands of tables that scales to thousands of concurrent users. They know the tech very well and know how to get from A to B cheaply which is incredibly difficult. They know how to organise large teams as well and have a good tech relationship with a lot of vendors which is really important. Not joking but what we threw at them had a codebase that would scare a lot of people and they sucked it up and spat it out in good shape and they did the same with the team too. As for Fowler, the analysis and formal descriptions he wrote up for PoEEA are rather good. Read the book at least once. You'll understand why things like hibernate were written and what problems they solve.

barsoap 12y ago

Datensparsamkeit under "assess"? As in "Let's assess whether we'd like to follow the law"?

jonnyleroy 12y ago
;-) More, assess whether to apply the approaches outlined in the German legislative framework to other jurisdictions, e.g. the US. Could be both a risk mitigator and a market differentiator.