Month: July 2006

http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/07/12/java_ee_burton_group/

Nah …

The whole stack is very complicated but most people only use about 15-20% of it (as with virtually every piece of software anyone’s ever bought I might add).

For example, hardly anyone uses EJB’s because it’s too complicated, there’s a movement in the industry to use Plain Old Java Objects for most things because of this.

Most people use the Web Application stuff because it’s easy to use and well understood (Servlets and JSP’s) and pretty easy to do big projects with if you’re disciplined.

Sun have produced a huge document that no-one will read apart from application server and tools vendors: meanwhile in the real world we’ll just get on with using the bits that are useful and ignoring the rest, as usual.

SOA – only the big corps are into this – it’s using sledgehammers to crack nuts for most of us. Again – big boy’s toys that they probably don’t need if they’re honest, but it looks good on the old CV.

I subscribe to a number of news letters about Java and Oracle and the people that run them seem to think that I want to listen to boring recordings of podcasts that were given by people who don’t understand the phrase Death by Powerpoint. There is a whole movement around this supposed content.

Podcasts are a poor, slow medium compared with the written word. I have lost count of how many times I have come out of an hours-long meeting to discover that the whole thing could be put on half a sheet of paper with a couple of bullet points. Why should podcasts be any different?

We have very powerful senses that can take in huge amounts of information very quickly if it is presented in a reasonably coherent way.

Don’t get me started on powerpoint – it’s a dangerous and poor medium for anything technical.

See here.

I’m a senior Oracle specialist who doesn’t live inside the M25 ring and it’s tough out there. Skills shortage? No, cheap new graduates shortage. Most of the senior-level work I see is either DBA or implementation of apps from Oracle or other ERP vendors.

I wouldn’t send my own kids into IT. It’s BORING. The fun stuff, programming, solving problems, making sure that you can truly meet needs, all that seems to be gone and have been replaced with a cheesy sweatshop mentality.

Also, sending jobs to India isn’t an issue. I work for a software house and we know we’re safe because the guys from Bangalore just don’t get the European cultural references. It isn’t cheaper to go there if everything has to be done twice – it costs a lot more in fact. I’m much more worried about places like Croatia and parts of the former Soviet Union where there isn’t the culture gap.

I also found the other comment here about higher productivity very funny – let’s move away from Oracle PL/SQL, Java and all the other sweatshop rubbish and start using some productive tools. Then it’ll happen. Longer hours? No thanks! That’s why kids are voting with their feet.