Java's Understandability.
February 14, 2005
It’s common to hear a lot of talk in the Java community about the importance of:
- scalability
- re-usability
- maintainability
These are important goals (often never reached in real projects btw,) but I wonder why no one ever talks about something that should be considered at least as important: understandability.
Some people might say that understandability would fall under the maintainability category. After all, for code to be maintainable, it should be easy to understand … right? Unfortunately in the real world, Java folk (seems to me) must have forgotten this all too important rule of good programming.
No, not another XML document!
These days, to get even the simplest of Java applications going, you need to do a lot of plumbing work which often includes setting up property files …
When I start filling in XML property and descriptor files, it feels like filling in acquisition forms to buy a new pen … I get this nagging feeling that I’ll have to fill out the XML files in triplicate and get them ok’d by 3 different people.
–
It shows that Java has been designed by huge corporations in a committee process (JCP) – Java ‘feels’ like a big giant corporation!
In it’s youth, Java was nimble language full of possibility and optimism. But like hippies from the 60’s, over time the oppression of corporate reality has turned this spritely language into a pedantic sloth.
So what’s next?
I don’t know what the next big language is going to be. But I do know it will be a scripting language that will:
- Have dynamic typing.
- Have a rapid feedback loop – thus not compliled.
Stefan Mischook
