RE: XML, RPG, Web Services, Joe = Holy War was ->RE: Re: Modify the IE Browser -- WEB400

> From: Eyers, Daniel
> 
> Yo, Joe... You feeling picked on this morning???

Hee hee!  Is it obvious?  <grin>  I just spent the last two weeks
updating my three JSP/servlet labs for November's iSeries DevCon to use
WDSC and WebSphere Express, so I'm a little tired and cranky.
Especially when I tried at the last minute to save my libraries back to
V4R5 and realized that I had decided to "upgrade" one of my examples to
use qualified data structures, which don't compile on V4R5.  ARGH!


> It's easier to maintain and you don't have to hire folks who are
experts
> in every technology.  Seriously, ever see the
> job listings today?  JSP, ASP, shell scripting, cgi, perl, IIS,
Apache,
> WAS, JBuilder, dot net, servlets, FTP, XML, ANT,
> make, C++, PHP, Java, HTML, and be able to make muffins using the top
of
> your monitor.  (OK, maybe I made that last one
> up).  JSP and ASP is usually an XOR, as is dot net and Java, as is IIS
and
> Apache.  What are these folks
> thinking!!!!!!!!

Remember that some of these position descriptions are in place to
justify bringing in H- and L- visa workers.  If you can't find someone
with 15 years of Java experience, that means you can hire someone for
$20/hr from Tata!


> So many times, managers confuse chasing the Next Big Thing with
strategic
> direction.  Hard to say which is correct... I
> do feel sorry for one of our plants that adapted Cold Fusion. Talk
about a
> technological misstep.

Ouch.  Welcome to the bleeding edge.  And yeah, Cold Fusion was the big
"it" thing just a couple of years ago, wasn't it?


> So much of development is about being good enough.  "Simple and
elegant"
> is still the hallmark to a great solution.

And I have no problem in general with using web services, if it fits
your business goals.  My problem is when a new technology comes out and
programmers start saying you're out of date if you don't use it.  My
point to Aaron was (and is) that design should not be technology-driven.

Design your application to fit your business goal, then select the
technologies that get you there most efficiently.  The tricky bit is
trying to determine which technologies will be around next week, which
is why it's generally a good idea to let a new technology mellow out for
a year or two before jumping on the bandwagon.

My favorite is EJBs.  Man, those were the straight shizzit for a while
there.  Everything was going to EJBs.  Until people actually tried using
them in production, and they found out that it was just as much work or
more to create a system with poorer performance.

Then it was JDOs, but I think those went away.  For the UI it was
Struts, and while that has a chance (it's a pretty good technology) it
may be supplanted by Java Server Faces.

Man, what a resume to try and keep up: XML, RDB, XHTML, CSS, EJB, JDO,
JSF, Struts, servlets, JSP, ASP, J2EE, J2SE, J2ME, Java, CGI, PHP, Perl,
Python, Jython, Unix, Linux, AIX, C#, J#,  VB, .NET, Swing, SWT, JFC,
SCJP, SCJD, SCBC, SCEA, AIEEEEEE!

<grin>

Joe "Maybe RPG Maintenance Programming Wasn't So Bad After All" Pluta