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Good advice. If you know a technology well, then run with it. Focusing on actually delivering value vs. bragging rights to the latest and greatest dynamic langu

by raju 17y ago

Good advice. If you know a technology well, then run with it. Focusing on actually delivering value vs. bragging rights to the latest and greatest dynamic language/framework. On a side-note, I will say this - I am a Java developer (at my day job), and Java-land boasts some of the best tool support there is out there. On the flip side, the refactoring argument does not hold much water. These days almost everything in Java, especially when using any kind of framework means a lot of configuration and wiring using XML, Annotations and other syntaxes (EL - Expression Language comes to mind). Most tools don't see these as live code, so refactoring essentially boils down to a lot of text search and replace. Java-land is learning a lot from the other communities and products out there. I have been told the Play Framework (http://www.playframework.org/ http://www.playframework.org/) has some potential but haven't looked at it yet.

bad_user 17y ago
About refactoring ... even if a project is pure-Java, the refactoring-tools are too simple, boiling down to rename class/method/var, extract method/class and things like that which are just too simple for real-world needs (and in practice, kind of useless ... since I've been doing these same ops in dynamic languages with a combination of find / grep / sed / emacs macros... with unit-tests as guard). When you want to radically change the architecture, as it happens when you've got the business/workflow model wrong, these refactoring tools won't help you. My opinion about Java ... the JVM and the available tools kick ass, but the language is a PITA and this shows in the design of many Java-libraries. Things like PlayFramework are a wonder and it takes discipline and perseverance to build things like that (not to mention having the will to break every best practice set out by the community).
ppolsinelli 17y ago
That is why we make an effort to keep at a minimum anything that breaks strong typing check. I agree that at times it is impossible, but you can keep it at a minimum.

by raju 17y ago

bad_user 17y ago

About refactoring ... even if a project is pure-Java, the refactoring-tools are too simple, boiling down to rename class/method/var, extract method/class and things like that which are just too simple for real-world needs (and in practice, kind of useless ... since I've been doing these same ops in dynamic languages with a combination of find / grep / sed / emacs macros... with unit-tests as guard). When you want to radically change the architecture, as it happens when you've got the business/workflow model wrong, these refactoring tools won't help you. My opinion about Java ... the JVM and the available tools kick ass, but the language is a PITA and this shows in the design of many Java-libraries. Things like PlayFramework are a wonder and it takes discipline and perseverance to build things like that (not to mention having the will to break every best practice set out by the community).

ppolsinelli 17y ago

That is why we make an effort to keep at a minimum anything that breaks strong typing check. I agree that at times it is impossible, but you can keep it at a minimum.