Pampering Day
Apple on the Radio
The DJs on my favorite radio station are pretty funny… I quote:
"Did you see Apple's new laptop? 5 pounds, titanium… and you still can't open it up when you fly coach."
Today is Pampering Day
First, the car. Oil change, inside cleaning, outside wash.
Second, me. Hair cut, buy new pair of shoes.
I screwed up and forgot to make an appointment with my regular hair stylist (that's what they call themselves nowadays.) I will most likely end up at SuperCuts or some place even scarier.
Whatever happened to the days when I didn't care who (or what) cut my hair?
Brent Simmons beat me to the punch answering Simson Garfinkel's I hate Java article. Brent rightfully points out that Java on the server-side makes sense.
Garfinkel complains about Java's poor performance compared to C/C++ solutions, a moot point when dealing with server-side applications. Granted, the interpreted nature of Java will most likely slow down the processing of the very first sever-side request, but all subsequent requests will be processed by code which has already been converted to bytecode and resides in memory. In other words, without substantial differences from native code. This is nothing new, I was making the exact same point back in 1998.
There are quite a few popular, powerful and reliable Enterprise solutions which are build around Java technologies such as Servlets, JSP, Beans, etc. As a matter of fact JSP-powered sites are popping up all over the place, from Omaha Steaks to the United States Postal Service.
Garfinkel also complains about Corel's inability to complete Office for Java. Don't blame it on Java, Corel hasn't been able to complete anything in a long time. If you're looking for an Office solution look no further than Sun's StarOffice. Just like the other office, it's huge and bulky, but it's also open source.
There's more to Java than some mortgage applet as Garfinkel seems to think. Applets are the tip of the iceberg, and Garfinkel has done as much research on the subject as the captain of the Titanic did.