Coach Wei's Blog
Here is a question that I have been pondering on and off for quite a while:
Why do "cool kids" choose Ruby or PHP to build websites instead of Java?
I have to admit that I do not have an answer.
Why do I even care? Because I am a Java developer. Like many Java developers,
I get along with Java well. Not only the language itself, but the development
environments (Eclipse for example), step-by-step debugging helper, wide
availability of libraries and code snippets, and the readily accessible
information on almost any technical question I may have on Java via Google.
Last but not least, I go to JavaOne and see 10,000 people that talk and walk
just like me.
The other reason that I ponder this question is that the power of Java is a
perfect fit for the areas where websites may need more than markups or
scripting, such as middleware logic. PHP and Ruby etc ... (more)
(March 9, 2006) - "There have been a number of language coming up lately,"
noted James Gosling today at Sun's World Wide Education & Research Conference
in New York City when asked if Java was in any kind of danger from the
newcomers. "PHP and Ruby are perfectly fine systems," he continued, "but they
are scripting languages and get their power through specialization: they just
generate web pages. But none of them attempt any serious breadth in the
application domain and they both have really serious scaling and performance
problems."
The Father of Java then dismissed Microsoft's C# as having had potential, but
no longer: "We were afraid they were going to do something really creative -
but they're hopelessly focused on one platform."
PHP (for example) is able to make things simpler because it's 100% aimed at
web pages, Gosling explained. Whereas with Java, he said, ... (more)
Many paths lead developers to ColdFusion. In the past ColdFusion was often
viewed as an entry-level language enabling designers and other nonprogrammers
to build dynamic sites. Since the release of CFMX it has become more
recognized among developers familiar with languages such as Java and PHP.
This is partly due to language enhancements such as CFCs, and partly because
it now runs as a Web application on top of a J2EE servlet container, thus
allowing it to be used to develop the presentation layer for complex J2EE
applications. For both types of developers there are requirements that an IDE
must support. Many Web development tools are geared toward the first type of
users mentioned above. They include features such as WYSIWYG Design Mode and
image mapping functionality. For many developers falling into the second
category, the WYSIWYG tools are lacking in the featur... (more)
"Companies have invested a significant amount of money in SOA – and
continue to do so," says Jeff Haynie, Co-Founder & CEO of Appcelerator, in
this exclusive Q&A with SYS-CON's AJAX & RIA Journal in the run-up to
Appcelerator's session on October 20 at AJAX World RIA Conference & Expo in
San Jose, California (October 20-22, 2008). "One of the keys to unlocking the
full return on investment in SOA is the ability to build service-oriented UIs
(SOUIs) – clients designed to consume services, regardless of language or
platform," Haynie continues. "We believe Appcelerator's approach truly zeros
in on the need for a clean separation of the application from services in an
agile development model," he adds. Read the interiew in full below...
About Jeff Haynie
Jeff Haynie is co-founder and CEO of Appcelerator, an open source software
company that develops products and services... (more)
This article tries to demonstrate that Java can be more productive than Ruby.
We are going to develop the same application of the article Rolling with Ruby
on Rails Revisited (part 1 [1] and part 2 [2]) but using POJO [3]s annotated
with JPA [4] and a Model Driven Framework, OpenXava [5] in this case. The
result is that with less code, and less time you obtain a more powerful
application.
Ruby and rails: The regressive framework
Ruby on rails [6] is so elegant, so easy, so productive. I cannot avoid read
and heard continuously these comments. For example, the article Rolling with
Ruby on Rails Revisited of Bill Walton says:
“What would you think if I told you that you can develop a web application
at least ten times faster with Rails than you can with a typical Java
framework?”
Oops! Ten times faster!
Well, after these comments I decided to learn Ruby on Rails. I ne... (more)
Service Component Architecture (SCA) is a simple model for creating
service-oriented applications. This article highlights the benefits of SCA
and introduces SCA concepts by walking through an example. The example has
been developed using the Apache Tuscany open source project
(http://incubator.apache.org/tuscany/). All the sample code in this article
is licensed under the Apache License 2.0
(www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0) and the resources with the article
gives a link to the sample files. Both the Apache Tuscany and PHP SCA_SDO
(http://pecl.php.net/package/sca_sdo) projects provide a free service
oriented infrastructure for creating, packaging, deploying, and managing
applications built with the SCA programming model.
The SCA programming model itself is described by a set of specifications that
are being developed by many vendors and individuals contributin... (more)
Welcome to my first installment as a LinuxWorld Magazine writer. I'm taking
over from my colleague Rob Jones and I hope to continue on the same track of
providing information on certifications, as well as discussing the nuances in
the Linux/Open Source recruiting landscape.
For this article, I decided to focus on one of the relatively new Open Source
certifications that are permeating the marketplace: the ZCE, or Zend
Certified Engineer, based on the popular PHP language from Zend, the PHP
company. As the use of PHP in the enterprise grows, it's only natural that
certification go along with it, as with ZCE.
Since it's less than a year old, I decided to take a different approach than
in the past. I figured it would be best to go directly to the source of the
most accurate information on it and its relevance in the marketplace. So I
did a brief e-mail interview with D... (more)
One of the big buzzwords that rose to fame in 2005 was "Ajax." The term
"Ajax" was first coined by Jesse James Garrett in his essay "Ajax: A New
Approach to Web Applications"
(www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php), and it refers
to the use of asynchronous JavaScript and XML to drive Web applications.
Rather than reloading the entire Web page every time data needs to be
transmitted, only small, necessary chunks are sent and received, with
JavaScript manipulating the UI in response to the data received. This gives
the look and feel of a regular client application while still being hosted
inside of your Web browser. While Ajax methodologies have been used for years
- most notably in Microsoft's Outlook Web Access - they have just recently
become incredibly popular via services such Google's Gmail and Google Maps.
Since Ajax has taken off among ... (more)
In this article I am going to introduce you to the latest version of the
Berkeley DB XML, version 2.2.8. Berkeley DB XML (BDB XML) is built on top of
the well-known Berkeley Database (BDB). BDB XML is an open source, native XML
database. Like its ancestor, BDB, it's an embedded database. It provides APIs
for the Java, C++, Perl, Python, PHP, and Tcl languages. It supports the
popular XML query languages XQuery and XPath 2.0. I will show you how to use
BDB XML in two ways. This month I will introduce the BDB XML shell, and next
month we will explore using BDB XML with Java. BDB XML has a lot of features,
and I will try to cover the most important ones.
What's an Embedded Database?
Some of you may be familiar with embedded databases. An embedded database
runs within another program. It is not a stand-alone server such as Oracle,
DB2, or eXist. It is the programmer's re... (more)
Let's play word association. I say "Web Hosting." I bet "fat margins" didn't
jump into your head. More likely, you thought of some of the "where are they
nows" of the bubble, like Exodus and PSINet. Let's do another round - I say
"New York City," and I'd wager that "cheap rent" wasn't the first thing you
thought of, either. So it may surprise you to learn that one hosting company
that's been around since 1993 and that's actually making money, Logicworks
(www.logicworks.net), just happens to be based in New York City.
What's their secret? Talk to CEO, Carter Burden, and he'll tell you that they
have low customer turnover because of their superb support, and that this
also allows them to earn a modest price premium over the competition. One
customer raves: "I have been a client of Logicworks for over 6 years. The
service has been as close to flawless as anyone has a ri... (more)
I’ve been blissfully neglecting to blog for months with the
assumption that a large part of our goal was completed. After watching good
people like Martin LaMonica and Jon Udell balance out the mainstream tech
press with coverage of lessish tools and languages, and having seen forward
looking companies like RedMonk inject themselves into the traditional analyst
racket with smart, honest, and unignorable critique, and having seen herds of
Java luminaries migrate to simpler, more agile tools and languages, and after
hearing Bill Gates say that less code was the only metric, and having watched
David, Bill, Ian, Adrian, Phillip, Aristotle, Harry, Mark, Mark, Chad, Curt,
James and many other extremely talented programmers dismantle all the common
hollow arguments for superfluous complexity and replace them with simple
methodologies and working code, after all that ... (more)