Fifteen years ago, it seemed that every second software salesman was trying to tell me that their product was going to make programmer’s lives so easy, they wouldn’t even have to be programmers anymore. Fortunately, with the fall of 4GLs and the rise of OO, there came a welcome easing of the “end-of-programming-as-we-know-it” sighting rate.
Now it seems to be on the up again. From the Jetson brochureware site:
Jetson reduces the most difficult and tedious aspects of J2EE development to simple tasks that even non-Java developers can perform…
Excuse me while I go all cynical; I cannot work up even a flicker of open mindedness about this. It would be brilliant if Jetson really did enable non-Java developers to thread their way through J2EE’s thick wads of standards, interesting vendor implementation decisions, and best-practice-whoops-no-thats-an-anti-pattern techniques, but it’s ice cubes against a volcano.
But wait! What is this? No! Maybe – just maybe – Jetson have a secret weapon. They say:
Jetson is the first of a new breed of J2EE Development Tools… [emph mine]
That’s right! They’ve been breeding tools. Jetson is the very first of the genetically engineered development tools! I wonder how they made it? A mutant hybrid of Rose, JBuilder and Subversion? Igor! Bring me the CASE tools!
Comments
I looove this arguing. "Make simple tools that perform a complex job, and monkey can make J2EE apps, now let's go back to that attractive Software-Engineering pattern that failed since it was introduced 30 years ago."
There's an abstract hope behind such tools, that they're the magic potion that helps make application-development cheaper. Despite the fact that in the 50+ years of IT history numerous people tried this, and still no such universal tool exists. In fact that should give you clues...
It's surely true that the right tools in the right hands at the right place with the right job help you beeing more productive. But that's a helluva list of predconditions.
I find it hard to extract any worthwile meaning from a man so emotionally scarred by past experience. Quote: "I cannot work up even a flicker of open mindedness about this."
Did he even use Jetson? Or did he just choose to damn Jetson out of pure emotion. I'm guessing he has anger control issues. I have heard (from sources who have USED it) that Jetson works extremely well, and is in fact somewhat of a mini-revolution.
John Kent