Saturday, February 25, 2006

Beyond Java

Bruce Tate has written "Beyond Java" and I am mostly in agreement with it, although it is repetitive, hastily written, and another example of something written out of negativity that had very well could have been written in a positive way. But of course, if "Bitter Java" was one of the previous bestsellers, it would be hard to resist.

The first question to pose is of course why it was never necessaty to write a "Beyond COBOL" or even "Beyond PL/1". It might be because it is not yet evident that there is a reason to go beyond Java and Tate knows that very well.

Secondly, as also observed by a colleague of mine, the book freely equates languages to frameworks and sings the praise of Ruby in the form of Ruby on Rails. It is very eclectic in its choosing of alternatives, and, for example does not mention Open Object Rexx or NetRexx, much older languages in the same vein, which slowly but surely are receiving more exposure.   
What has become very tiresome are the kayaking intros to every chapter, like "I was foolishly conquering a very dangerous waterfall when it occurred to me that multiple inheritance can be a lot of trouble". Well, it's no quote but you know what I mean.

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