Category: Archive

JavaOne starts next week, and most of the Java developers will be watching closely what “s new and exciting will be announced in the tried, true and aging Java. But my today “s topic is about books that will be sold at JavaOne.

It would be wrong not to start with promoting the book that I “ve co-authored this year:

Rich Internet Development with Adobe Flex and Java. We spent a year writing this advanced book, and I “m pretty pleased with the result ndash; this is not one of these shallow books that repeat API descriptions of vendors manuals. In this book we are sharing how to design and build rich Internet enterprise applications in an object-oriented way with such great and complimentary technologies as Flex and J2EE. You can get this book at the booth of Sys-Con Media. People who are into AJAX will be able to get a brand new Sys-Con “s book called “Real World AJAX rdquo;.

A well known publisher, Addison-Wesley/Prentice will sell their newest books there as well. They will also be presenting sample chapters from the books that will be released in the future. These are some of the titles that sound interesting to me:

New 3rd Ed. for “Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications rdquo;, co-authored by Grady Booch. I got the preview copy and plan to review this book next month.

JBoss reg; Seam: Simplicity and Power Beyond Java EE. This book is about accelerated Java EE Web development.

SOA Using Java Web Services, a hands-on guide to implementing Web services and SOA with Java EE 5 and Java SE 6 platforms.

Filthy Rich Clients: Developing Animated and Graphical Effects for Desktop Java Applications. This book will be officially published in Summer “07, but may be available soon as a final draft manuscript.

I “m sure O “Reilly and other publishers will be selling books there as well.

JavaOne has a book store called Digital Guru, which also runs several book signings by the authors attending this main Java conference. Here ‘s the schedule of the book signing:

Joshua Bloch [Java Puzzlers; Effective Java] on Tues. 5/8 @ 4:30pm amp; Wed. 5/9 @ 12noon;

Inderjeet Singh [Designing Enterprise Applications with the J2EE trade; Platform, Second Edition] on Wed. 5/9 @ 3pm;

David Geary [Core JavaServer Faces, 2nd Ed.] on Wed. 5/9 @ 5pm;

Brian Goetz [Java Concurrency in Practice] on Thurs. 5/10 @ 12:30pm.

Apress runs authors book signings as well:

Tuesday May 8th, 2007

* Noon ndash; 12:30pm Graeme Rocher (Grails founder/lead) of The Definitive Guide to Grails

* 1:30 ndash; 2:00pm Raghu Kodali et al of Beginning EJB 3 Application Development

Wednesday May 9th, 2007

* 2:30 ndash; 3:00pm Adam Myatt of Pro NetBeans IDE 5.5. Enterprise Edition (endorsed by NetBeans)

Thursday May 10th, 2007

* 12:00 ndash; 12:30pm Jonas Jacobi and John Fallows of Pro JSF and Ajax (endorsed by JSF communities)

* 1:00 ndash; 1:30pm Damon Williams of Pro PayPal E-Commerce

* 1:30 ndash; 2:00pm Mike Keith (EJB 3 co-spec lead) of Pro EJB 3: Java Persistence API

Even though most Java developers rely on Google in finding technical help, nothing can beat a good book. Try to allocate some budget for book purchases next week.

When Microsoft renamed WPF/E into Silverlight it was just a re-branding news. But yesterday “s news requires some serious attention. Microsoft has announced SilverLight 1.1 Alpha.

Here “s the quote from asp.net :

“Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. rdquo;

If Silverlight 1.0 Beta was about XAML GUI with the business logic written in JavaScript, now a new runtime called Dynamic Language Runtime will be used for the RIA deployment, and the fun part is that you “ll be able to create these applications with any of the languages mentioned above. This is really breaking news. The new runtime will weigh about 4Mb (Flash Player 9 that holds two VMs weighs 1.2Mb), and expected seamless installation time is under 30 sec (similar to Flash Player 9). JIT is also there.

While Java community is discussing which language features to include in the heavy tank of the future called Java 7 , their main competitor provides support to multiple languages. JVM is a very powerful but underutilized machine, and it “s about time to run more than just tried and true Java there.

Now Adobe has to respond to Microsoft with some secret weapon besides Apollo. If I were running Adobe RIA division, I “d pick up the phone and dialed the number of Jonathan Schwartz.

“Jonathan, what do you think of this crazy idea ndash; let “s see if we can run some trimmed down version of Java in Flash Player 10 rdquo;.

Two or three years ago, when RSS readers were not as common as today, some nice guys created a very convenient Web site called javarss.com, which was an agregator of Java news and articles from major online magazines and other Java-relate sites. The interface was simple and clean, it was showing the article titles and the tooltips would show a short descriptions of the article as you moved the mouse pointers over the titles. It used to look like this . This site was saving me lots of time as I read daily many articles on Java and other software technologies. Ten days ago I went there just to find out some evil picture stating that the site has been hacked and some other text in Arabic, which I can ‘t read. Things happen, bad guys exist, and you just have to live with it.

Today I decided to revisit the site, and the hackers page is still there. As per some other sources, the hackers even contacted the javarss admin providing their emails and offered to let the site go asking for something in return. I ‘m not going to discuss here morale principles of the hackers – most likely they grew up in bad neighborhoods, were molested by their uncles, they are poor now and believe that filthy rich western pigs have to share. So the term morale is not applicable here. But the fact that a site is down for a couple of weeks tells me that the javarss folks are incapable of fixing it. It ‘s so easy to create a Web page these days as long as everything is kosher around you, but are you ready for the rainy days? In this particular case, the site was non-profit so no one is loosing money, but what if you want to create and host your small business Web site. How protected is it? Will you be able to survive these or other attacks? Can you make your monthly income dependent on a Web site that you host on your own? The answer is no freaking way. One incident like this, and not only your business of selling women ‘s lingerie is dead, but you also need to deal with lots of frustrated customers asking their money back. By the way, are you a geek that decided to write your own shopping cart application that knows how to charge customers credit cards? Sure you know Java, Ajax, have read about HTTPS, and can create a Web page where users will be able to enter their credit card numbers.

Do you want to do this? no-no-no-NO!

Leave it to the big guys like PayPal that know how to survive hacker ‘s attacks.

Running a Web business looks very appealing, but be careful – find a reputable host company and delegate the money handling routines to professionals. It ‘ll cost you more, but you ‘ll be able to sleep at night.

R.I.P. javarss.com.

My favorite blogger Joel Spolsky by mistake referred the United Kingdom as England. Apparently he felt bad about it and not only publicly apologized, but also offered to buy you a pint of beer. Joel is buying on May 19 in Edinburgh (is this in England?). As a 100% geek, Joel set up a Wiki page so beer drinkers could sign up and discuss this event. His offer did not specifically require you to be an Englishman, so you should use this loophole to your advantage. Here ‘s what you should do:

1. Purchase a plane ticket to England/UK if you are not there

2. Get to the Edinburgh.

3. It does not matter where you are from, pretend that you get really mad when people refer the UK as England, and whoever did it must pay.

4. Enjoy the evening with Joel.

5. Forgive him and buy him a pint.

Our first two components DaoFlex and Flex2Ant go on sale at myflex.org. Both of them are plugins and are geared toward turning Flex into a Rapid Application Development tool.

DaoFlex plugin 1.0 is a code Generator that takes an SQL Select statement and in less than a minute generates all artifacts for your Flex/Java application that needs to work with a database and perform Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD) functionality.

Flex2Ant plugin instantly translates your existing Flex Projects into ANT build scripts, so that you can build your modules, libraries and applications outside of Eclipse and create larger integrated builds. What takes weeks on the middle-size project, now can be done in seconds by a click of a mouse. While generating the build script, we apply additional size-optimizing techniques that help to modularize development and cut the download time of enterprise Flex applications.

While development of the front-end for enterprise applications in Flex is faster than in Java, using DaoFlex and Flex2Ant is a step toward some serious reduction of time to market. Plugins were written using Java, XML and XSLT, but no knowledge of these languages is required. On the other hand, advanced users can customize XSLT templates to ensure that these plugins generate code or build scripts as per specific project needs. Check out the documentation and demos, play with the trial versions of these plugins at http://www.myflex.org.

Given the time savings these plugins will definitely bring to any commercial project, their prices are nominal: DaoFlex costs $499 USD per developer “s copy, and Flex2Ant costs $249.

One of my favorite bloggers, Paul Graham, has published an essay called “Microsoft is dead rdquo;. He starts, “A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead rdquo;, and then explains why he thinks so.

Obviously, Microsoft circa 2007 is not the same as 10-15 years ago. It “s weaker now, but it “s far from being dead. I “m not a Microsoft developer, but during the last twenty years I use their products daily ndash; Windows OS, MS Word, MS Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio. Last month I “ve attended a very interesting technology summit for a small non-Microsoft crowd at Redmond, WA. I “ve posted a number of more or less technical blogs with my notes from this event, but this time I “d like to explain my vision of this software giant as a respond to Paul “s blog.

About fifteen years ago, Microsoft could afford to do a lot more than any other software company. They could hire the best people in the industry. I remember these urban legends about their job interviews with questions like “How would you count all lakes in America rdquo;. The interview could last for an entire day, and any interviewer from the team had the right of veto. This was a very desirable employer, and those who were lucky enough to get in and smart enough to stay there for fifteen years were set for life. They do not need to work anymore. Microsoft insiders call them volunteers – they go to work, because they do not know how not to work.

During the nineties Microsoft was killing their competitors without thinking twice. They used the fact that they owned THE OS, knew its API internals better than anyone else, and used this knowledge to their fullest advantage. The classical case was their victory over WordPerfect, a very popular word processor of the early nineties.

Microsoft was so strong, that they “ve accustomed to the fact that they were in the league of their own. The rest of the software world was somewhere down below.

When Java was invented, Microsoft decided to bite a slice of this pie too. So they created Visual J++, Java IDE and decided that they can quietly add some extra features to the Java API, so people would start using them thinking that they were programming in Java. This would tie them with Microsoft platform for a while hellip; There is a joke describing somewhat similar situation:

A guy comes into a Jewish restaurant in New York and sees two illegal Chinese busboys fluently talking in Yiddish. He asks the owner,

“How did you teach them Yiddish so well? rdquo;

“Hush, they believe they speak English! rdquo;

The same trick did not fly with Java, Microsoft paid their penalties, no big deal. They created their own language called C#. It was interesting to read license Microsoft ‘s license agreements – they stated that Java failure could lead to death .

At that time Netscape was a clear leader in the Web browser space. Microsoft created Internet Explorer. Microsoft knows how to create software. Oh, by the way, the next version of Windows will come with a free IE browser. No, you do not need to install anything, just click on the icon. Netscape did not have such a luxury ndash; they did not control THE OS. Netscape? What Netscape? Microsoft rested on laurels, and for years they did not even bother to improve IE.

But these Mozilla guys were pretty stubborn and in a couple of years they came up with FireFox. It took years for Microsoft to realize that FireFox is here to stay, so they started to invest into IE Web browser again. A little too late, but hellip;the enterprise world likes standard tools, and in most cases IE is still your only choice at work. Will it last? Not sure.

Here “s yet another parallel development hellip;What is that little annoying thing that you can see here and there on the enterprise floors? What Linux? No worries. Nothing can beat Windows. May be not beat, but bite and pinch for sure.

Microsoft Office has been THE flagship product for years, but some crazy scientists came up with this idea of making free downloadable word processor and a spreadsheet. A competitor of the PowerPoint is coming up this Summer from a company whose name starts with G, ends with GLE.

Microsoft is still a leading software company in the world, but it just does not generate that many original ideas any longer.

They are trying to catch up with all these smaller guys that are popping up here and there like mushrooms after the rain.

During Technology Summit at Redmond engineers have presented their products, and this portfolio is strong and impressive. But I “ve also learned a couple of things that you can see only during personal contacts: Google is a problem.

Google is Microsoft “s main problem for several reasons. Microsoft has missed yet another boat called Internet Ads. For decades, Microsoft was sharpened for selling licenses. In the summit, several speakers openly stated that they “ll do anything to sell more Windows licenses. For example, last year they “ve invited people from JBoss to collaborate in the area of integration with IIS hellip;to be able to sell more IIS licenses. But now they need to catch up again and learn a new business model with making money by selling ads, like Google does.

Microsoft lost to Google the image of the coolest company to work for. Google hires the best brains. Young people run Google ndash; BG was in a similar position twenty years ago. Twenty years ago… Back than BG ‘s subordinates were counting how many times BG said the word f*ck during the meeting to judge if he was in a good mood or not…If your project was get ting just one or two f*cks, you ‘ve been doing great. How romantic… Microsoft has overlooked the Web, but Google did not.

Google does not catch up, they generate ideas.

Paul Graham concludes, “I ‘m glad Microsoft is dead hellip; “. I do not think Microsoft is dead, but it rather has a flu, which is curable. Or re-phrasing Mark Twain, “The rumors of Mictosoft ‘s death have been greatly exaggerated “. Also, I do not want Microsoft to be dead, because if they die, Google may get a flu, if you know what I mean.

American Media is looking for sensations, and because of that they keep airing the tapes of that animal Seung Hui Cho. This is a huge mistake because this is exactly what that hui was looking for – getting famous no matter what. Such publicity can lead to copycatting by other unstable and inadequate minds.

It ‘s a pity that American journalists are not familiar with a classical novel and play “Forget Herostratus “. In 356 BC, in Ephesus , Herostratus burns the temple of Artemis to make his name immortal.. Someone has to write a play called “Forget Hui “.

In Russian, Hui is a really strong curse that means dick. Stop exposing that Hui.

These are my definitions of being happy and rich. Test yourself.

You are happy if these three conditions are true:

1. You like going to work/school in the mornings

2. You like going home in the evenings

3. You are looking forward toward the weekends

You are rich if you do not have to go to work.

The absolute amount in your bank account does not matter ndash; a homeless can be rich too. Some people argued that it “s rather a definition of being free hellip;

If you are not rich, you can make some moves to become one, but if you are not happy, tough luck.

Are you happy? Are you rich? Are you rich and happy?

Update. After writing this blog, I ‘ve heard an interesting formula on the radio:

happiness=reality/expectations

For example, if you rent an apartment in a bad neighborhood but dream of living in a penthouse on the 5th Ave, your happiness index is about 1/100. But if you rent an apartment in a bad neighborhood and are OK with it, your are happy: 1/1.

I like this formula, but what if you live in a penthouse but dream of living in a rented apartment in a bad area (is it really bad)? The formula 100/1 generates a “more than happy ” result. But is it so?

Who “s better looking ndash; Flash Player or Silverlight?

As of today, 98% of the world computer users know what Flash Player is and only 2% or so know what “s Silverlight . But this will change pretty soon because Silverlight is nothing else but a new name of Microsoft “s WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere).

Or to put it simple, it “s a Web browser plugin that supports Internet Explorer, FireFox and Safari.

While Flash Player applications can be developed by Flash, Flex or OpenLaszlo developers, applications for Silverlight can be developed in Visual Studio or Expression Studio. I “ve seen the demo of these IDEs last month at Microsoft, and they looked very good. While Flex has abandoned Flash timeline, it looks nice and natural in Expression Studio.

Both Flash Player and Silverlight can read any plain HTTP feed. Flex also offers faster binary protocols for communication with the server side applications written in Java and other languages, including a third party solution (offered by Midnight Coders) for integration with .Net. I am not sure if there are any such deals for fast communication between Silverlight and non .Net applications.

For streaming video for Flash Player you can use either Flash Media Server or open source Red 5 . For streaming video for Silverlight, you can use Microsoft “s Internet Information Server.

As of today, Flash Player is far ahead in terms of install base and it “ll take Microsoft lots and lots of efforts to come even close to the leader. But I “m sure Microsoft will be in a much better situation a year from now, and they won “t need to use Flash Player for online commercials of their future versions of Windows as they did with Vista .

He loved Manhattan and rented a nice small apartment on 9th amp;45th.

He lived there happily for 9 months.

One night , he was mugged right by his house – they took his wallet and the iPod.

He moved across the river to Hoboken, NJ.

He does not like Manhattan that much anymore.

The End.