Re: Setting up a Java development environment the debian way.
On Wednesday 22 June 2005 14:48, Aurélien Campéas wrote:
> Le mercredi 22 juin 2005 à 08:01 +0100, Alan Chandler a écrit :
...
> > I am a complete newbie as far as java is concerned.
>
> Then, allow me to question your choice of Java as a web development
> language & platform.
>
> Are you a newbie wrt Java the language ? or Java the web dev tools ?
I am a newbie for both
>
> If so (if either ...), and if this is for a pet project and not mandated
> by the corporate drones, why not have a look at some excellent, 100%
> free, alternative languages & platforms ? I can cite a few :
>
> python / zope, quixote, ...
> ruby / ruby-on-rails ...
I did take a long close look at ruby-on-rails. See below for why I convinced
myself not to take that route.
>
> Guess what, for a good part these frameworks (and the choice of their
> mplementation language) have been made by people disgusted by the Java /
> J2EE / whatever way of doing things. They are more lightweight and
> pleasant to use. Do yourself a favor, don't go the Java way ;-).
>
Let me give you my reasoning for thinking about going down the java route.
First. I have worked for the same system development company for the past 33
years. However the last time I programmed commercially (ie I was paid to
write software) was in about 1978 (in PDP 11 assembler). I was probably
still very technically involved with software development during the 1980's
when I was head of a product development unit in my company and and remained
responsible for the strategic technical vision for the product. In mid
1990's I started moving over to becoming a business expert (in Electricity
Competion), and although I did some data and process modelling as a way of
understanding requriements, I have not done any technical work since.
Two. Because I do no technical work at work - although with a technology
company - I play with the technology at home. It has become my hobby
Three: I am very much at the front end sales and bidding process. We
frequently bid applications requiring web front ends to a database, the core
software which we use and then enhance is almost always a java servlet/JSP
implementation, which I don't properly understand the issues of. I would
like to understand better the technical nuances of what is being bid - and
understand what is hard and what is easy to do.
I have heard the arguments (specifically the ones suggesting using ruby on
rails) which I only partially buy into (ruby terseness seems partially to be
lack of type checking - does this really work in industrial strength
application development?) but I have no frame of reference for the the other
side of the argument.
So I have two reasons to go java. One to understand what technical people at
work are telling me, the other to really understand the other side of the "my
programming language is best" arguments.
But I will go the Ruby route if this doesn't work out. But I have to try Java
first.
--
Alan Chandler
http://www.chandlerfamily.org.uk
Reply to: