On 12/23/2010 2:23 PM, Sean wrote:
>
>> Java stuff seems to be more self-contained so there is a little more
>> freedom to mix component versions between applications and you aren't
>> completely tied to someone else's update schedule.
>>
> Yes, superior exploitation must be granted Java (over say Cpan,
> C-libraries etc) in scenarios that are naturally exploitation-heavy,
> such as you indicate. But for everything? Hmmm.
> A long ago tale goes thus: There was once a problem I would have
> attacked with half a page of Prolog had I known I would end up writing
> all the code myself, no matter how hard to actually get it right. I
> conceded to Java for the sake of team effort and wrote my portion as far
> as I could, but was unable to test properly without the other 3 portions
> which, as it turned out, never eventuated. Towards the death knell I
> stayed up and wrote them myself, chapter after chapter .. on .. and on
> .. and on. It ran, but no surprise it produced incorrect results, and
> too much code to go back through and try fix all that spaghetti logic in
> the time available. A lesson learnt, and I haven't written a line of
> Java since!
I see two different ways this applies. One is that large applications
typically assemble their own collections of jars instead of expecting
them in the system classpath so they don't affect each others' updates
(like using static libs for everything). The other is that java
developers seem to buy into writing unit tests and doing full regression
testing before releases more than anyone else (my impression anyway...).
Maybe it is because development is so cumbersome already that adding
testing overhead doesn't make that much difference - or they've had to
automate it with something like Hudson.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com