...Wherein we examine what ant fundamentally lacks, and possible ways to address the important problem of build control...

Impressions from my experience attending The Server Side Symposium, where I spoke on Rich Internet Applications

An roundtable discussion of Sun's new Java Research License (JRL).

The JavaOne 2003 developers conference shows that Java has weathered the initial ravages of growth and is ready to mature.

News on Dave's book & tutorials.

In his essay titled, "Java's Cover", Paul Graham explains why he thinks Java is a "stinker". Although some of the points made are valid, there are many misconceptions that are unfair or outright wrong, and need to be corrected. More importantly, Dr. Graham seems to miss the real value propostion of Java as a language and platform.

Small companies struggle to get their first product out the door. That's probably no surprise. But, the next hurdle may be even more difficult: getting the second product, the next generation product, out the door. The problems are not necessarily technical -- but they can be deadly for a young company nonetheless.

Almost everyone who teaches object orientation uses the class as a fundamental building block. Such an approach misses the central point of object orientation: the objects themselves, and what they portend for flexibility and effective design. This weblog is a case study in teaching object orientation.

Rather than speak in vague generalities lets go through two specific overlapping APIs - JavaSpaces and JMS - and think about what a unified version would look like.

Idiomatic java isn't a place to get inspiration on how to build loosely coupled architectures. Even though Java idioms are extremely useful, when you get to "programming in the large" it's a whole different ballgame.

Java and C# are almost identical programming languages. Boring repetition that lacks innovation. Where is the revolutionary programming language that will stop the redundancy?

Use cases are a wonderful idea that has been vastly overcomplicated. The real trick to use cases is to _keep them simple_. Remember, tomorrow they are going to change.

Now we know what God thinks of us. See http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030630.html?list=true.

Confused by the chaotic maelstrom of XML specifications coursing through all those standards organizations? Take a look at this, and enlightenment will follow...

If you’d like to earn a living doing what you love most, and if that happens to be writing software, then lower your eyes, purse your lips penitently, and force yourself instead to look for dollars in tangents: write books about it, consult on it, sell hardware to run it, teach it – anything but aspire to live from crafting software itself.