Posted on 09/20/2010 8:52:32 AM PDT by RogerFGay
Java is taking over the world.
Ping
I’ve been out of the programming Biz for awhile now. And hopefully things have really changed for the better. I just don’t know that it has from personal experience.
And now with that being said, I found that the concept of re-usable code was a great concept. But in practice led to Bloatware. That is software that had so many Re-used modules that had unused portions in them that were unnecessary for the project at hand.
And quite frankly in the software projects that I worked on it turned out that the most efficient use of code and equipment usually came down to a single individual writing and then handing it over for testing to another individual or small group that was known for breaking code and finding bugs or faults.
The end result was code that is still in use 20+ years after being written.
And once again I am no longer in the programming Biz. So if things have improved to the point that re-usable upper level code is feasible. Then go for it.
Also as a side note. My brain got worn out while trying to remember nuances and syntax in the various programming Languages, I learned, Assembler, BASIC, RPG, COBOL, Fortran IV and 77, C, C++ They sometimes became a jumble in those late morning coding sessions. And after all that I found that it was too much and just concentrated on one.
Today I just do some farming and I am happier than I have been in Decades. There is something to be said for downsizing to a simpler lifestyle.
The only method I’ve ever seen work to get people reusing code is full group code reviews. You can talk a lot about best practices and libraries and everything else, but the punchline is that unless people know there’s something in house that’s already solved Problem X they aren’t going to go looking for that code to use, they’re going to write their own. The most common sentence I’ve heard uttered in full group code reviews is “I didn’t know we had that”. Of course the problem with full group reviews is you have to stop all development for a week or two and lock everybody in long very boring meetings. It’s usually worth it in the long run, but it’s a hard sell.
Bump for later
I’m an old guy too - pretty much been all those places and done all that just like you. I remember when the new fangled C++ compilers came out - I was much more excited about the graphics support in the package than the ++.
So, in fact, I wrote the article more for guys like you and me than anyone else. Things have changed; but in case you’re wondering - there still are bad programmers in the world. (LOL!) The more that gets perfected for reuse, the better.
Back in the 1980s, I worked on “toolkits” for creating certain types of applications. They weren’t perfected until they had been seasoned with the experience of at least three applications. You could have things like reading and parsing the same kind of file (why do that more than once?) and generating the same kind of file, and match them up in different ways to translate various file types in and out of the file type the toolkit was designed for. You could also provide utilities to help.
Yes, a lot has happened since then. I tried to make the article both easy to ready by not belaboring details, but hopefully enough to get the point across. The battle for reusable code is moving target (as the article points out), but what we’re looking at here is the fact that looking back on so many years of experience - there’s some meta-knowledge with the knowledge. And that just might come to something.
What did you think of my discussion of that issue in the article? And the description of the solution I’m pointing to?
ping
I only do Java after going through algol, pascal, fortran, assembly, C, C++, Cobol, Basic, Visual Basic, Access and probably a couple I’ve forgotten. Java ain’t perfect though.
“Java is taking over the world”
To the extent that is happening, it’s mainly “push” rather than “pull”.
The available skill sets in kids these days is what drives the use of Java, rather than any considered need or desire to use it.
Nothing’s perfect. I know C++ converts who treat it like a religious experience though. C is still faster at math. Even dedicated Java programmers should step out of Java if they have some very heavy number crunching to do. BTW: You’re experience isn’t with J# is it? You know that’s not real Java.
There’s this thing called the Internet ....
Ding Ding Ding!
And we have a winner!
You, sir, are correct.
A lot of people now (particularly young, foreign developers) just try to glue together a variety of crap they find for free on the Web. And the end result is quite a spectacle indeed! :)
Well, if you want to consider dynamic weeb page development “programming”, then point taken. (I assume that was your point.)
To me, that’s little more than scripting. And besides, perl is pretty popular for that purpose too.
You realize that the article you’re posting under really isn’t about Java. It’s just that I can also think about the issues you raise.
Yes, JSP does offer an alternative to in page scripting. I don’t use it myself, but never thought there was much reason to argue with people who do. At first, it looked like you had to refresh whole pages to use it - which irritated me to no end, so I argued against using it myself. You could do it so much nicer with Ye Olde DOM techniques.
and HTML5 is supposed to expand and simplify interaction with server based process. :)
But BTW: networking is useful for more than serving web pages.
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