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Beyond Java View Larger Image | Bruce A. Tate
O'Reilly Media, Paperback, Published September 2005, 152 pages, ISBN 0596100949 | List Price: $24.95
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Bruce Tate, author of the Jolt Award-winning Better, Faster, Lighter Java
has an intriguing notion about the future of Java, and it's causing some agitation
among Java developers. Bruce believes Java is abandoning its base, and conditions
are ripe for an alternative to emerge.
In Beyond Java, Bruce chronicles the rise of the most successful language
of all time, and then lays out, in painstaking detail, the compromises the founders
had to make to establish success. Then, he describes the characteristics of
likely successors to Java. He builds to a rapid and heady climax, presenting
alternative languages and frameworks with productivity and innovation unmatched
in Java. He closes with an evaluation of the most popular and important programming
languages, and their future role in a world beyond Java.
If you are agree with the book's premise--that Java's reign is coming to an
end--then this book will help you start to build your skills accordingly. You
can download some of the frameworks discussed and learn a few new languages.
This book will teach you what a new language needs to succeed, so when things
do change, you'll be more prepared. And even if you think Java is here to stay,
you can use the best techniques from frameworks introduced in this book to improve
what you're doing in Java today.
About the Author
Bruce A. Tate is a kayaker, mountain biker,
and father of two. In his spare time, he is an independent consultant in Austin,
Texas. In 2001, he founded J2Life, LLC, a consulting firm that specializes in
Java persistence frameworks and lightweight development methods. His customers
have included FedEx, Great West Life, TheServerSide, and BEA. He speaks at conferences
and Java user's groups around the nation. Before striking out on his own, Bruce
spent 13 years at IBM working on database technologies, object-oriented infrastructure,
and Java. He was recruited away from IBM to help start the client services practice
in an Austin startup called Pervado Systems. He later served a brief stint as
CTO of IronGrid, which built nimble Java performance tools. Bruce is the author
of four books, including the bestselling Bitter Java, and the recently
released Better, Faster, Lighter Java, from O'Reilly. First rule of kayak:
When in doubt, paddle like Hell.
Customer Reviews
Customer Reviews: 1 Average Customer Rating: May 10, 2006 Ben Leadholm from St. Louis Park, MN
valuable insight for Java developers
Beyond Java will torque off many developers. Bruce Tate (no Java neophyte himself) articulates his and others frustrations with the language and frameworks developed to make creating web applications easier. He gives a background for Javas parallel development with the web, and the opportunity it had through Servlets to displace other CGI languages, like Perl or C. Compared to C development, Java was easier. Its numerous classes and better implementation of cross-platform compatibility delivered on the promises of C++. As the Internet grew in popularity, so did Java. Great developers migrated to Java because it allowed them to implement their ideas quicker. Bruce persuasively argues that many alpha geeks now prefer different languages, namely Ruby and Python. He dissects some of popular development languages for their strengths and weaknesses. Bruce says if a language has the following characteristics: Has an established community Is portable across platforms Provides economic incentive (such as increased productivity) Demonstrates technical advantages Then it could displace Java. He notes that Microsofts C# is too similar (being strongly typed) to Java to be the next killer development language, and says that Pythons intangibles prevented explosive growth in the development community. Bruce introduces the reader to the Ruby on Rails framework as an alternative to developing web applications, quantifying how much more productive it made his team for implementing a website. Many independent developers who create web applications are migrating to the Rails framework, and eventually smaller, then larger companies will be unable to ignore the productivity difference between Java and Ruby. The book is important because it allows developers to step away from their keyboard, put down their Blackberry, and gain insight into what is happening: growing dissatisfaction with Java. Its numerous APIs that were supposed to ease web and enterprise development have been its Achilles heel they make such development either less productive or the learning curve too steep for novice developers. Java isnt going away its open source community, ability to run across multiple platforms, libraries of code, and the numerous developers have made it the king of the hill of development languages. But monolithic, entrenched systems have been displaced before. If Ruby gets a decent Eclipse or Visual Studio plug-in, the migration could be swift. Finally, this is one of those rare computer books that one doesnt need to place next to a computer to gain insight. Its style is conversational and open, and you could read it anywhere. I would highly recommend it to any developer or PM.
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