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Oracle buys Java: I heard the news while driving home last night... This is really very good news for Java.
Posted by johnreynolds on April 22, 2009 at 07:41 PST | Permalink | Discuss (7)  

Applications as Process Activities: If you are a Developer who builds sites where folks go to "do things", then I hope can inspired you to think a bit about those "things" as part of a larger Process.
Posted by johnreynolds on April 17, 2009 at 14:06 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

IBM buys Java: Rumor has it that IBM is buying Java - and the company that spawned it.
Posted by johnreynolds on March 18, 2009 at 17:45 PST | Permalink | Discuss (8)  

The Desktop is Dead (or at least terminally ill): Chris Adamson recently questioned the value of Swing 2 and I have to go one further... Isn't it time to admit that the Desktop is dead?
Posted by johnreynolds on March 03, 2009 at 06:02 PST | Permalink | Discuss (35)  

Programming or Software Engineering?: There's an interesting thread going on over at InfoQ regarding the relationship between BPM and Software Engineering.
One subtext of this discussion raises a wider question - When is it "Programming" and when is it "Software Engineering"?
Posted by johnreynolds on January 27, 2009 at 02:18 PST | Permalink | Discuss (3)  

Chickens and Eggs - Methodology and Tools: Which came first? Object Oriented Methodology or Object Oriented Languages? From where I was standing at the time I'd have to say Object Oriented Methodology.
Posted by johnreynolds on October 15, 2008 at 07:33 PST | Permalink | Discuss (6)  

Data Models that Mom can use?: Back when I was working on Tandy's DeskMate we were trying to build a personal computer "that Mom could use". I think we came pretty close to that goal... Mom could use it. Unfortunately Mom didn't want to use it :-( Is there any chance at all of coming up with Data Modeling notation that Mom could use?
Posted by johnreynolds on September 18, 2008 at 15:17 PST | Permalink | Discuss (1)  

Just Enough to Not Be Dangerous: My blog entry on User Manual Driven Development prompted Chris Adamson to share some thoughts of his own: Should you have to understand the application you're writing?
Posted by johnreynolds on September 12, 2008 at 13:39 PST | Permalink | Discuss (3)  

User Manual Driven Development: Back in the days before objects, our development methodology was simple but effective... the marketing group wrote the deskmate user manual and we built the applications to match the manual.
Posted by johnreynolds on September 05, 2008 at 09:32 PST | Permalink | Discuss (6)  

Another look at Object Oriented versus Process Driven Design: Friends were troubled when I blogged "Object Only Programming is Silly". They know from experience that life after OO is dramatically better than life was before OO... so my criticisms just don't sit well... Obviously I must have gone off the deep end :-)
Posted by johnreynolds on August 30, 2008 at 08:59 PST | Permalink | Discuss (2)  

Is programming hard?: Is Programming hard... or are we making programming hard? That thought came to mind while I was reading Johan Den Haan's well stated opinions on Reasons Why Model-Driven Approaches (will) Fail over at Info Q.
Posted by johnreynolds on August 06, 2008 at 17:44 PST | Permalink | Discuss (7)  

Most Software Development Obstacles are ______: Fill in the blank in the following statement: Most Software Development Obstacles are ______ (A) Technical (B) Cultural If you answered (A), then I am intensely jealous :-)
Posted by johnreynolds on July 27, 2008 at 18:30 PST | Permalink | Discuss (8)  

The Next Generation In Workflow?: Tom Baeyens, of JBoss jBPM fame, published a great overview of BPM's past and possible future in his article: Process Component Models: The Next Generation In Workflow ? over at InfoQ. Check it out!
Posted by johnreynolds on April 22, 2008 at 19:34 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Object Only Programming (and Modelling) Considered Silly: Every so often I come across a blog entry that makes my own attempts to put my thoughts in writing seem pathetically inadequate. Stevey's Blog Rant: Execution in the Kingdom of Nouns is one such entry.
Posted by johnreynolds on April 18, 2008 at 01:30 PST | Permalink | Discuss (9)  

Net Beans (6.1) Page Flows: NetBeans (6.1) Page Flows may be a small step towards Model Driven development.
Posted by johnreynolds on April 14, 2008 at 11:19 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Iterative Development: Iterative Development is by far the best way to implement your Managed Business Process... unless your definition of "Iterative Development" is different from mine ;-)
Posted by johnreynolds on April 10, 2008 at 15:43 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Getting Tasks to the Right Users in a Managed Business Process: Still don't quite understand what's different between "normal" programming and developing managed business processes? Perhaps this blog on Task Routing in a Managed Process will help you to understand the issues that Business Process Developers have to deal with.
Posted by johnreynolds on March 08, 2008 at 02:56 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

Drive the Path (process and data flow): Any tools can be used wrong, and I believe that's the reason many developers hate BPM. They just don't know how the BPM tools should be used... and I'd love to rectify that situation.
Posted by johnreynolds on February 08, 2008 at 18:14 PST | Permalink | Discuss (3)  

My OLPC arrived!: My "Give One, Get One" OLPC arrived, and it's a blast. Check out the snapshots at my other blog.
Posted by johnreynolds on December 31, 2007 at 19:53 PST | Permalink | Discuss (3)  

Give One, Get One: It's not too late to Give One and Get One...
Posted by johnreynolds on November 26, 2007 at 15:47 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

The BPM Elevator Speech: A few years ago I posted a short blog entry "The SOA Elevator Speech" to try to distill SOA into talking points that you might be able to cover on one elevator ride. With that posting in mind, here's my attempt at explaining BPM as concisely as I can...
Posted by johnreynolds on November 07, 2007 at 19:05 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Monolingual web toolkits: Phobos vs. GWT: The JVM is well on its way to becoming a multi-lingual environment with support for Java, Javascript, JRuby, Groovy, etc. but I have to admit harboring concerns about polyglot programming within a single project.
Posted by johnreynolds on October 16, 2007 at 18:29 PST | Permalink | Discuss (5)  

"We don't see the need for BPM": My recent blog entry "Java Developers Hate BPM" was intended to stir up some folks and to generate a good discussion. It was successful... I got a lot of very good and honest feedback (a.k.a. "hate mail").
Posted by johnreynolds on October 11, 2007 at 17:04 PST | Permalink | Discuss (14)  

Why do Java developers hate BPM?: I work on a lot of BPM projects, and I work with a lot of other folks who work on a lot of BPM projects, and we have all encountered resistance from traditional Java developers.
Posted by johnreynolds on October 10, 2007 at 04:40 PST | Permalink | Discuss (22)  

The Anatomy of a Human Powered (web) Service: Human Powered Services (HPS) are the piece of the puzzle that meshes BPM with SOA... With HPS in the mix choreographing Human and Autonomous services is seamless, without HPS in the mix choreographing Human and Autonomous services is a pain.
Posted by johnreynolds on August 21, 2007 at 20:10 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Making life simpler: the Java EE Operating System: Earlier this year I suggested that the multitude of Java EE implementations is a bad thing... but now I think I didn't go far enough... Why not just build an OS that is a Java EE app-server?
Posted by johnreynolds on June 26, 2007 at 16:28 PST | Permalink | Discuss (5)  

Recyling old rants... Getter and Setter Methods: I am far from the first person to rant about "Getter and Setter" methods. (some have even said they are evil).. but it's been awhile since anyone has posted a new diatribe on the subject, so what the heck... Please check out my other blog: How not to teach programming: Getter and Setter Methods
Posted by johnreynolds on June 23, 2007 at 16:09 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

In search of a new acronym: SOW (Sevice Oriented Workflow): I find that saying "BPM stands for Business Process Management" results in blank stares from most of my fellow programmers, so coming up with a better explanation has been on my mind, and I am beginning to think that a new acronym might be called for... Just look what AJAX did for HttpXMLRequest ;-)
Posted by johnreynolds on April 21, 2007 at 09:59 PST | Permalink | Discuss (3)  

Java EE should be an implementation: There, I've put it in writing... Enough of this madness. Java EE should be an implementation, not a spec.
Posted by johnreynolds on April 08, 2007 at 10:11 PST | Permalink | Discuss (14)  

Traveling Guy: As virtual meetings get better, as our ability to project our presence remotely improves, will there come a time when "in the flesh" meetings aren't necessary?
Posted by johnreynolds on February 17, 2007 at 17:55 PST | Permalink | Discuss (2)  

The Twin Paradox: Programmers don't dictate requirements... and in many shops they are even discouraged from questioning any requirements... but this anecdote points out something pervasively wrong.
Posted by johnreynolds on January 26, 2007 at 05:26 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Fear of the Unseen...: I think we've got a visibility paradox. We need to hide implementation details behind interfaces, but at other times we need to know those very same implementation details.
Posted by johnreynolds on January 22, 2007 at 09:41 PST | Permalink | Discuss (7)  

Kitchens and Fast Food Factories: I've begun thinking that a Kitchen vs. Fast Food Factory analogy might teach us a bit about writing better software...
Posted by johnreynolds on January 14, 2007 at 11:29 PST | Permalink | Discuss (6)  

Why are we going?: Fabrizio's blog, Where are we going?, prompts me to ask: Why are we going?
Posted by johnreynolds on January 11, 2007 at 09:14 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

CDW's "Fred" vs. Microsoft's "Bill": CDW and Microsoft are each running ad campaigns featuring IT support guys... Which one would you want to work with?
Posted by johnreynolds on December 03, 2006 at 11:30 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Human-Powered Web Services: Business processes are made up of automated and human-performed tasks, and we need to be able to implement both types of tasks in a manner that allows them to be consumed by a multitude of applications. That's what SOA was really all about in the first place.
Posted by johnreynolds on November 18, 2006 at 11:13 PST | Permalink | Discuss (6)  

The Era of Process-Centric Design: If you follow my postings, then you won't be surprised to learn that I think we are at the dawn of a new era in programming. As with all previous eras... nothing is really new, it's just a point in time where existing good ideas rapidly ascend to a pervasive level of acceptance.
Posted by johnreynolds on November 10, 2006 at 12:35 PST | Permalink | Discuss (1)  

Business Process Musings: For the past few months I've been working with a very polished Business Process Management (BPM) suite from Lombardi Software , and I have to say that I am as happy as a clam. I feel like I have discovered a tool that I've been missing for at least 20 years, maybe longer, and I'm delighted.
Posted by johnreynolds on October 31, 2006 at 08:35 PST | Permalink | Discuss (5)  

Open software pragmatism - Free (as in beer) isn't the point: Go back with me to the mid-90's and revisit the issues that we had with that closed-source code that we'd purchased...
Posted by johnreynolds on September 02, 2006 at 10:35 PST | Permalink | Discuss (15)  

Thoughts on "The Modular JRE" and Open Sourcing Java: David Herron posted a clarification of "what it means to be Java" on his blog, and the examples that he used got me thinking...
Posted by johnreynolds on August 22, 2006 at 07:38 PST | Permalink | Discuss (9)  

Is the End of Tiered-Based Computing in Sight?: Perhaps the most widely adopted style of software architecture is the N-Tier architecture... the separation of concerns based on stacked tiers of functionality. Is the emergence of Grids and Service-Oriented Architecture going to change the way most software architects approach their designs?
Posted by johnreynolds on August 15, 2006 at 10:24 PST | Permalink | Discuss (11)  

Disconnected Browser-Centric Clients: I might be the only person on the planet who wants all of his applications to be browser-based... but then again maybe there are a lot of other odd people out there with the same desire.
Posted by johnreynolds on August 03, 2006 at 09:03 PST | Permalink | Discuss (19)  

Why Use A Database Instead Of ____?: A recent blog entry by Simon Morris questions the usefulness of including a relational database (JavaDB) with the Standard Edition of the Java Development Kit (SE JDK)... Here's my attempt to answer his questions.
Posted by johnreynolds on July 13, 2006 at 22:36 PST | Permalink | Discuss (14)  

Off topic blog on Distracted Drivers...: Just some thoughts on how we may need more technology to make driving safer.
Posted by johnreynolds on July 11, 2006 at 10:38 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Why JMatter matters - a wake-up call for programmers: My fellow blogger Eitan Suez open-sourced jMatter last week... a Naked Objects inspired framework for creating workgroup business applications. I am always interested in Eitan's activities, but jMatter really struck a chord when I read a bit about its background on the jMatter mailing list.
Posted by johnreynolds on June 24, 2006 at 13:52 PST | Permalink | Discuss (13)  

Objects are Nouns... Services are Verbs... SOA hinges on designing the right Verbs: Sun's Tim Bray has recently expressed his opinion that the term "SOA" is meaningless, and that he prefers the term "Web-style". With respect to Tim, I disagree with his opinion.
Posted by johnreynolds on May 25, 2006 at 08:53 PST | Permalink | Discuss (14)  

JSF and AJAX versus Swing: Evan Summers wrote a very good blog on "Swing versus everything else" a few days ago, and it started me thinking... Many heated battles are fought in the war between browser-based applications and "stand-alone" applications... Have we forgotten what we are fighting for?
Posted by johnreynolds on May 11, 2006 at 15:21 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

John Gage's Ad-Hoc Keynote - WCIT2006: Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R. Texas) was not able to make it to Austin's WCIT2006 for her Friday Keynote Address (due to a late Senate vote), so John Gage (Chief Researcher and Vice President of the Science Office for Sun Microsystems) pitched in with a delightful Ad-Hoc presentation.
Posted by johnreynolds on May 05, 2006 at 17:55 PST | Permalink | Discuss (2)  

Security and Privacy - WCIT2006: All of the volunteers for WCIT2006 had to undergo background checks by the FBI... No exceptions. That's a really harsh requirement when you are so reliant on volunteers to conduct business... it was impossible to accept any of the many last minute offers to help. Is security is worth the loss of privacy? That is one of the topics that the World Congress of IT is discussing in Austin this week.
Posted by johnreynolds on May 04, 2006 at 12:30 PST | Permalink | Discuss (2)  

Exchanging Innovative Ideas - WCIT2006: My memories of Tuesday's WCIT2006 Innovation Exchange are a bit of a blur, but it sure was fun. I volunteered to help out, and was assigned to help usher speakers to and from the podium... We started at 8:00 am, and ran non-stop until 6:00 pm... 17 speakers from Texas, Malaysia, Australia, Korea, Taiwan, Cambodia, Australia, Canada, and Mexico... and that was in only one of three meeting halls.
Posted by johnreynolds on May 03, 2006 at 11:59 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Internet-Access For All - WCIT2006 in Austin: WCIT2006 is just a four day convention, so don't expect miraculous pronouncements that transform the world... But it should be a very interesting to hear what everyone has to say.
Posted by johnreynolds on May 01, 2006 at 06:08 PST | Permalink | Discuss (2)  

The World (of IT) Heads To Austin: The World Conference on Information Technology (WCIT) is coming to Austin this year... and it should be a lot of fun. I've been volunteering for the event over the past week or so (doing some mundane tasks that just have to get done) and I will be helping out during the event itself. There is a tremendous amount of work that goes on behind the scenes... WCIT2006 professional staffers have been working on this event for two years and there are still a million little loose ends to tie up.
Posted by johnreynolds on April 28, 2006 at 11:17 PST | Permalink | Discuss (3)  

Teaching Kids to be Thoughtful Programmers: Today's kids are amazingly creative technophiles... If you have any doubts about that, just check out some of the videos posted at sites like YouTube... They are obviously great film-makers, but how do we get them to be great programmers?
Posted by johnreynolds on April 26, 2006 at 08:18 PST | Permalink | Discuss (13)  

"Programmer to the Stars" Bruce Tate spotted at swanky North Austin establishment: I recently had lunch with "Programmer to the Stars" Bruce Tate at a swanky North Austin establishment... Bruce was (of course) traveling incognito due to the fatwa issued against him by various Javatollahs for blaspheming the one true programming language.
Posted by johnreynolds on April 18, 2006 at 13:34 PST | Permalink | Discuss (15)  

Product Architecture from a software perspective: I recently worked with an Enterprise Architecture team to develop a "holistic product architecture", but quite frankly we were not sure what "product architecture" meant. Here's what we came up with.
Posted by johnreynolds on April 05, 2006 at 14:24 PST | Permalink | Discuss (1)  

Ken Orr's advice to Java programmers (and the secrets of writing good software): Recently I had the pleasure of sitting down with Ken Orr (of Warnier-Orr Diagram fame) to discuss his views on software design and on what programmers really need to know. In the 70's Ken pioneered techniques that inspired a generation of developers, and he's ready to do it again.
Posted by johnreynolds on March 17, 2006 at 13:49 PST | Permalink | Discuss (7)  

Software for Business People (like my dad): My father ran a small-town employee credit union in the 1960s and early 70s when most small organizations still used paper to store their records. Technology has dramatically changed, but in many respects businesses have not... Remembering this can help us write better software.
Posted by johnreynolds on March 09, 2006 at 08:10 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Is an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) appropriate for volume-performance critical consumer applications?: In response to my SOA/ESB Level Set blog entry, I got a very good question about whether or not an ESB makes sense in environments with "high volume-performance critical consumer applications (such as in a financial institution) who have well defined providers and don't need externalized orchestration, transformation or even routing"
Posted by johnreynolds on March 02, 2006 at 16:24 PST | Permalink | Discuss (8)  

Service Oriented Mashups: What can Service Oriented Architects learn from Mashups? Aren't mashups just about fluffy browser stuff? Free orchestration tools like NetBeans 5.5 may just change that.
Posted by johnreynolds on February 21, 2006 at 16:56 PST | Permalink | Discuss (2)  

What kind of CTO do you want to be?: When I was growing up back in the 60's, I wanted to be a CTO. Yup, during the excitement following Kennedy's pledge to put a CTO on the moon by the end of the decade, and with TV shows like "CTO Trek" and movies like "2001, a CTO Odyssey", all I could think about was how great it would be to be a CTO...
Posted by johnreynolds on February 14, 2006 at 18:10 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Hello... My name is John, and I am a java.net blogger: A sad but pathetically true tale of 103 entries as a java.net blogger...
Posted by johnreynolds on February 09, 2006 at 19:12 PST | Permalink | Discuss (12)  

Service Oriented Architects: Service Oriented Architects need to focus on business processes and on business services. The SOA architect has to understand where a business process is likely to change, and where it probably won't. They need to understand factors that impact multiple process steps, and those that are specific to a single step. Without this level of business knowledge SOA architects will not be able to design services with the proper granularity, and they won't be able to design the proper data interchange model.
Posted by johnreynolds on February 07, 2006 at 17:48 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

Can I call you back? - Asynchronous Web Services: Asynchronous Services are a fact of life, and a key requirement for successful SOA solutions.
Posted by johnreynolds on February 01, 2006 at 07:32 PST | Permalink | Discuss (5)  

Service Orchestration vs. Service Choreography: Do you know the difference between Web Service Orchestration and Web Service Choreography? Orchestration is about music and Choreograhy is about dance... but for some odd reason this doesn't help me grok the distinction.
Posted by johnreynolds on January 19, 2006 at 12:53 PST | Permalink | Discuss (12)  

SOA/ESB Level Set: Building on my SOA Elevator Speech, I have created a set of level setting diagrams for discussing the use of an Enterprise Service Bus.
Posted by johnreynolds on January 10, 2006 at 19:03 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

What do programmers really need to know?: Joel on Software recently posted the following observation: "...there's nothing hard enough about Java to really weed out the programmers without the part of the brain that does pointers or recursion...". Is the part of the brain that does pointers or recursion the part of the brain that programmers need to have? There's a lot of bad software out there that is not written in Java, so maybe mastering a "hard" programming language isn't much of a factor after all.
Posted by johnreynolds on January 03, 2006 at 17:55 PST | Permalink | Discuss (10)  

Big dreams on the longest night of the year...: December 21st is the winter solstice, the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. What better time to dream sweet visions for the future?
Posted by johnreynolds on December 20, 2005 at 16:58 PST | Permalink | Discuss (5)  

Ja-va-saurus and the Asteroid: The Business Week article "Java? It's So Nineties" quotes Peter Yared as saying "Java is a dinosaur". Let's grant Peter the benefit of the doubt and assume that he's right. Let's assume that Java is in fact a dinosaur and have some fun...
Posted by johnreynolds on December 15, 2005 at 07:18 PST | Permalink | Discuss (11)  

Form Validation in an SOA context: This blog continues the classic client-side versus server-side validation discussion, but now adds another layer - web service "side" validation. How can you share validation logic across client-side JavaScript, Java within the web application, and Java within underlying web services?
Posted by johnreynolds on December 03, 2005 at 09:04 PST | Permalink | Discuss (3)  

Paving cow paths - Service Component Architecture plans to smooth out the bumps: If you have the time, you might enjoy reading the joint whitepaper from BEA, IBM, Interface21, IONA, Oracle, SAP, Siebel, and Sybase on Sevice Component Architecture.
Posted by johnreynolds on December 01, 2005 at 12:17 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

"I Agree" or "Cancel": We need more options: The recent Sony BMC rootkit fiasco confirms a sad fact... a digital certificate doesn't guarantee much of anything.
Posted by johnreynolds on November 23, 2005 at 08:15 PST | Permalink | Discuss (9)  

Is Java the wrong language for business programming?: Business needs applications that can be maintained long after the original coder is gone. Java is a great language, but does Java's richness lead to unmaintainable code?
Posted by johnreynolds on November 15, 2005 at 17:11 PST | Permalink | Discuss (17)  

Solutions for the 3rd world that might make the 1st world jealous: Bruce Boyes's Blog, "The $100 PC in another guise?", and the comments that it generated got me thinking about solutions for the 3rd world that might make the 1st world jealous.
Posted by johnreynolds on November 03, 2005 at 06:13 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

AJAXOffice, the next big thing: Contrary to Jonathan Schwartz's "common sense" views, rewriting OpenOffice in AJAX will revolutionize the software industry, reduce global warming, and promote good posture.
Posted by johnreynolds on October 26, 2005 at 07:01 PST | Permalink | Discuss (17)  

Beyond Java, but not beyond the JVM: I've yet to read Bruce Tate's new book, but I think I get the point.
Posted by johnreynolds on October 20, 2005 at 09:06 PST | Permalink | Discuss (11)  

How Beans side-tracked Enterprise Java: Sometimes a single word can really wreak havoc. "Bean" is one such word. If the word "Service" had been used instead of the word "Bean", J2EE would have made more sense.
Posted by johnreynolds on October 06, 2005 at 12:44 PST | Permalink | Discuss (1)  

SOA: Real Meat, and Potatoes too: James Gosling asks if SOA is Real Meat. The answer probably requires a change of perspective.
Posted by johnreynolds on October 05, 2005 at 12:47 PST | Permalink | Discuss (7)  

How to keep your programming job: In the blog entry "Why don't you get a job?", Chris suggests that "In the future, you may be not just a J2EE developer, or even a J2EE web app developer, but instead a J2EE financial web app developer, or a J2EE medical web app developer, or a J2EE media web app developer, etc.". Fear not my business adverse readers, there's another option.
Posted by johnreynolds on September 21, 2005 at 23:07 PST | Permalink | Discuss (2)  

Innovators and Remodellers: I admit to RoR envy (It's fun, powerful and innovative) but I am more likely to actually use Facelets (in my work).
Posted by johnreynolds on September 09, 2005 at 06:04 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

Great Javascript resources: AJAX has rekindled my interest in Javascript, and much to my delight there are a lot of great library resources out there.
Posted by johnreynolds on September 01, 2005 at 06:55 PST | Permalink | Discuss (7)  

Decoupling client-side JavaScript components from server-side web frameworks: AJAX and Web Services may hint at a better way to build a web component framework.
Posted by johnreynolds on August 25, 2005 at 07:27 PST | Permalink | Discuss (2)  

Is Simon Phipps' mailbox full?: "If you think Sun is doing something that is clueless, you can e-mail ombudsman@sun.com and have an impartial individual look at your complaint or comment and, where possible, act on it"
Posted by johnreynolds on August 19, 2005 at 06:31 PST | Permalink | Discuss (1)  

Straining the bath water (in search of lost babies): Innovation in web component frameworks is a wonderful thing, but there seem to be a lot of babies headed down the drain.
Posted by johnreynolds on August 12, 2005 at 15:40 PST | Permalink | Discuss (10)  

Longing for an Integrated Maintenance Environment: We are already blessed with many great IDE choices for developing our code... and now we're beginning to see glimpses of environments that will help us maintain deployed applications.
Posted by johnreynolds on August 02, 2005 at 06:24 PST | Permalink | Discuss (7)  

Austin (as in Texas) Java Users Group meeting: What better way to spend a Tuesday evening?
Posted by johnreynolds on July 27, 2005 at 06:06 PST | Permalink | Discuss (1)  

GUI Builders Considered Harmful: Should we "Beware The GUI Builder"?
Posted by johnreynolds on July 25, 2005 at 08:26 PST | Permalink | Discuss (7)  

Faces and Flash?: IBM and OpenLaszlo are offering up a new choice in Rich Internet Applications.
Posted by johnreynolds on July 22, 2005 at 06:47 PST | Permalink | Discuss (6)  

Democratizing Innovation: Eric Von Hippel's book Democratizing Innovation is a great read for those of us who are wondering where Open Source may be leading us.
Posted by johnreynolds on July 21, 2005 at 05:47 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Who will pay for innovation?: Back in 1973, a young Bill Gates was demonized for asking the following:"Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?"
Posted by johnreynolds on July 12, 2005 at 06:00 PST | Permalink | Discuss (12)  

Java EE app servers: Why pay for support?: It's likely that all Java EE app servers will soon be free. When all app servers are free, many companies will turn to selling ongoing support contracts, but will anyone pay for support?
Posted by johnreynolds on July 08, 2005 at 06:40 PST | Permalink | Discuss (11)  

The next big thing in IM/email/blogging: the Rudeness Checker^TM: First came the spell checker, then the grammar checker... We are way over due for the Rudeness Checker^TM.
Posted by johnreynolds on July 01, 2005 at 05:47 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

Pondering Pisa: Some of my less patient readers are wondering why-the-heck I am blogging about my Tuscan vacation on java.net. Stick around, I'm getting there...
Posted by johnreynolds on June 24, 2005 at 05:41 PST | Permalink | Discuss (1)  

Java Business Integration, JSR 208, passes final ballot: Will JBI lead to an Enterprise Service Bus in your future?
Posted by johnreynolds on June 22, 2005 at 13:18 PST | Permalink | Discuss (3)  

Open Office and Java - I'm for it: Personally, I am delighted that Open Office is using Java. If you agree, please speak up.
Posted by johnreynolds on May 12, 2005 at 12:11 PST | Permalink | Discuss (29)  

Uncertainty may not be what you think it is: How do you plan for uncertainty?
Posted by johnreynolds on May 09, 2005 at 07:53 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Happy Ending to the Netbeans "Replace Dialog" tale: My pet peave that Netbeans couldn't limit a search/replace to the selected text has been addressed.
Posted by johnreynolds on April 26, 2005 at 09:28 PST | Permalink | Discuss (1)  

Process Driven Design and JBI (Java Business Integration): PD4J didn't turn out to be all that I had hoped for, but I still believe in (Business) Process Driven Design, and JBI might be the next driver.
Posted by johnreynolds on April 21, 2005 at 20:27 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Remedial Programming Classes?: U.S. students earlier this month made their worst showing in the 29-year history of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.
Posted by johnreynolds on April 19, 2005 at 07:06 PST | Permalink | Discuss (18)  

Clustering's new alternative: Azul's JVM appliance is a totally different approach at dealing with JVM scalability: . Azul replaces the JVM on a server with a proxy that redirects processing to a specialized grid of “JVM tuned” processors.
Posted by johnreynolds on April 14, 2005 at 17:44 PST | Permalink | Discuss (5)  

GNU licenses and small startups: I recently blogged a lament regarding obstacles to the use LGPL'ed software... Here's the other side of that coin.
Posted by johnreynolds on April 08, 2005 at 03:12 PST | Permalink | Discuss (2)  

Keep the objective in mind: We often get lost in the minutiae and confuse details with objectives.
Posted by johnreynolds on April 01, 2005 at 15:20 PST | Permalink | Discuss (1)  

Engineer, Conductor or Brakeman?: What does it say on your business card?
Posted by johnreynolds on March 31, 2005 at 12:11 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Java and scripts and pipes: Scripts and pipes encourage loosely coupled implementations.
Posted by johnreynolds on March 24, 2005 at 08:16 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

Robocode goes Open Source: The ability to develop autonomous robot warriors transforms Robocode from a mindless shoot-em-up video game to an excellent tool for teaching programming and deductive reasoning.
Posted by johnreynolds on March 21, 2005 at 07:01 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Making things too easy: Perhaps a lot of software is bad because it is too easy to develop?
Posted by johnreynolds on March 14, 2005 at 11:44 PST | Permalink | Discuss (6)  

The Same Big Things: The techno-clairvoyants have been strangely quiet of late... so I am left on my own to predict what "The Next Big Thing" is going to be. I think that one "Big Thing" will be to put the "P" in COBOL: a Common Business Process Oriented Language.
Posted by johnreynolds on March 10, 2005 at 06:35 PST | Permalink | Discuss (3)  

TSSJS Impressions - We won; Now what do we do?: I had intended to write a running blog at the TSSJS, but that didn't happen. Initially, technical glitches with my PDA and the wireless network held me back, but as I began to attend sessions and talk with my peers I found myself at a loss to effectively blog my impressions.
Posted by johnreynolds on March 06, 2005 at 17:26 PST | Permalink | Discuss (6)  

AJaX: Two steps forward... Two steps back?: The basic message of Ajax is that modern browsers, through a combination of JavaScript and XmlHttpRequest, provide an advanced client that allows you to write rich client interfaces without the need to deploy a plugin.
Posted by johnreynolds on March 04, 2005 at 07:52 PST | Permalink | Discuss (15)  

PDA blogging woes at the TSSJS: Have you ever tried to get through the day with only your PDA?
Posted by johnreynolds on March 03, 2005 at 07:04 PST | Permalink | Discuss (1)  

Why is so much software so bad?: James Gosling's blog entry on Sharpening the Axe includes a confession that is a telling clue in our search for some of the causes for bad software.
Posted by johnreynolds on February 26, 2005 at 15:24 PST | Permalink | Discuss (12)  

Pragmatic Web Forms: WebForms2: I recently came across a discussion of WebForms2, and after checking out the links I've come away pleasantly optimistic that building form-centric web applications is about to get simpler.
Posted by johnreynolds on February 20, 2005 at 17:31 PST | Permalink | Discuss (10)  

News from a Parallel Universe: JSF and Tapestry project leads agree on future course: At the upcoming TheServerSide Java Symposium in a parallel universe, the doppelgangers of Howard Lewis Ship and Craig R. McClanahan will agree to base JSF 2 on Tapestry
Posted by johnreynolds on February 15, 2005 at 20:23 PST | Permalink | Discuss (10)  

A cautionary LGPL tale: Open Source software isn't "cancer", but you must be cautious to prevent infections.
Posted by johnreynolds on February 07, 2005 at 10:31 PST | Permalink | Discuss (24)  

Objects, Components, Web Services and BPEL: Why don't we make BPEL engines smarter?
Posted by johnreynolds on February 02, 2005 at 20:32 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Off Topic Thoughts about NASA and the Hubble: This has very little to do with Java, except reminding us that it is important to keep thinking outside the box.
Posted by johnreynolds on January 26, 2005 at 05:33 PST | Permalink | Discuss (3)  

Certification or indoctrination?: Do the Java certification exams stress skills or dogma?
Posted by johnreynolds on January 19, 2005 at 07:18 PST | Permalink | Discuss (7)  

The SOA Elevator Speech: What is the fastest way to de-mystify SOA?
Posted by johnreynolds on January 06, 2005 at 16:15 PST | Permalink | Discuss (18)  

Privately famous: Who would have thought that my java.net blogs would make Andy Warhol's prediction come true?
Posted by johnreynolds on December 17, 2004 at 08:03 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

Too old to program?: Is programming just a career for young whippersnappers?
Posted by johnreynolds on December 13, 2004 at 11:19 PST | Permalink | Discuss (18)  

The Rich Web Client conundrum: Flex, Laszlo, Java Web Start, JSF, Tapestry: What's a poor programmer to do?
Posted by johnreynolds on December 07, 2004 at 09:41 PST | Permalink | Discuss (9)  

Adolescence isn't all that it's cracked up to be: Brian Marick's recent blog laments that the adolescence of computers is almost over, and we're doomed to the stagnation of adulthood. Brian's high school memories are a bit fonder then my own ;-)
Posted by johnreynolds on November 05, 2004 at 07:15 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Tapestry Component Examples: contrib:Tree and contrib:Table: I've posted my first pass at explaining the Tapestry Tree component and updated my Tapestry Table examples.
Posted by johnreynolds on October 22, 2004 at 17:21 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Fashion and Function... Why not?: Let's face it, most computers are booring. Maybe that's changing.
Posted by johnreynolds on October 15, 2004 at 08:12 PST | Permalink | Discuss (5)  

Learn by Teaching: Examples using the Tapestry Table component: There's an old saying that the best way to learn something is to teach it. Works for me!
Posted by johnreynolds on October 06, 2004 at 11:53 PST | Permalink | Discuss (13)  

Someone's listening: Sun made my day with their open letter regarding Java persistence.
Posted by johnreynolds on September 27, 2004 at 20:09 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

A Tale of Two Dialogs - Replacing Text in Netbeans and Eclipse: Sometimes it is the simple things that count.
Posted by johnreynolds on September 03, 2004 at 08:28 PST | Permalink | Discuss (15)  

Creating custom components for Echo-Hangman: In an earlier blog I discussed "porting" the Tapestry Hangman example to Echo. In this installment, I create some custom controls. There are few better ways to understand a component framework then to develop some new components.
Posted by johnreynolds on August 26, 2004 at 08:06 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Echo-ing the Tapestry Hangman example: Re-implementing the Tapestry Hangman Application using the Echo web component framework provides a lot of insight into both frameworks.
Posted by johnreynolds on August 18, 2004 at 11:29 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

Public plea to the EJB 3.0 expert group: Please review the EJB 2.0 CMP and JDO FAQ: A fresh read of Sun's EJB 2.0 CMP and JDO FAQ could help avoid repeating past mistakes.
Posted by johnreynolds on July 29, 2004 at 00:41 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

Bigger fish to fry: Sometimes you just need to be told what problems are worth solving.
Posted by johnreynolds on July 25, 2004 at 12:24 PST | Permalink | Discuss (9)  

Dyson's Meta-Mail: merging email with business processes: In Dyson's words:"Text search can catch topics (or nouns, what something's about), but it can't catch the implicit 'transactions' (or verbs, such as commitments, deadlines and decisions."
Posted by johnreynolds on July 20, 2004 at 02:43 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

Fluffless Stuff in Austin: This weekend's "No Fluff Just Stuff" symposium in Austin was a hoot (and I even learned some new things)!
Posted by johnreynolds on July 12, 2004 at 06:45 PST | Permalink | Discuss (2)  

Improve JSF by Decoupling Form Rules from Presentation Components: Component Frameworks have a lot to offer, but they need to encourage simple mapping between user requirements and the implementation of the requirements. Business Form oriented input validation can help.
Posted by johnreynolds on July 06, 2004 at 20:24 PST | Permalink | Discuss (6)  

Thoughts on J2EE, Spaceship One, and getting back to the moon: The Java community can learn from NASA's shuttle and Rutan's Spaceship One
Posted by johnreynolds on June 21, 2004 at 06:17 PST | Permalink | Discuss (7)  

It's time for RDBMS Change Notification Services: Applications written in different languages often manipulate the same records, and this shared access leads to a fundamental problem: How do you know that your data is in sync with the RDBMS?
Posted by johnreynolds on June 09, 2004 at 13:06 PST | Permalink | Discuss (8)  

Lessons from BEA eWorld 2004: I'm back "home" from BEA eWorld, and can now reflect on what I learned there, and begin to integrate those lessons into my game plan for the future.
Posted by johnreynolds on June 03, 2004 at 14:29 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

BEA eWorld 2004 day-by-day: My adventures at BEA eWorld
Posted by johnreynolds on May 25, 2004 at 08:13 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Beehive or hornet's nest? - BEA donates code to Apache: BEA is trying to strike a balance between Profitability and Portability by donating code to Apache.
Posted by johnreynolds on May 20, 2004 at 08:17 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

A second look at BPELJ: BPELJ will make it possible to use BPEL to orchestrate long-running interactions with Web Services and J2EE components, but embedding language specific logic within a BPEL document is an idea that should be debated by the Java community.
Posted by johnreynolds on May 13, 2004 at 05:03 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Anti-Pattern - The Swiss Army Effect: I had an impressive Swiss Army knife when I was a kid, but I never did use all the blades.
Posted by johnreynolds on May 06, 2004 at 11:37 PST | Permalink | Discuss (6)  

Coding for your own legacy: What are you doing today to insure that the programmers of tomorrow don't curse that @#%!! legacy Java code that they're stuck with?
Posted by johnreynolds on April 30, 2004 at 06:26 PST | Permalink | Discuss (2)  

Data access sanity check: The best strategy for collecting data can vary wildly based on where the data currently resides. Make sure that your assumptions match your system's reality.
Posted by johnreynolds on April 26, 2004 at 06:24 PST | Permalink | Discuss (3)  

Is Java popular in spite of its standards?: Many features of the J2EE specification are reviled by ardent Java supporters... What is the magic that keeps Java developer's loyal?
Posted by johnreynolds on April 19, 2004 at 14:30 PST | Permalink | Discuss (9)  

BPELJ - Good idea or bad dream?: IBM and BEA have just released a joint white paper on BPELJ, a combination of BPEL and the Java programming language. This may be a really good idea, or it may be the worst mistake since JSP was introduced.
Posted by johnreynolds on March 25, 2004 at 14:25 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Aspects of Persistence - What should CMP and JDO share?:
Posted by johnreynolds on March 15, 2004 at 13:54 PST | Permalink | Discuss (1)  

Make JDO the "P" in CMP: Bruce Tate's article "For JDO, the Time Is Now" brings up many good points, but it misses a key concern of mine: JDO and CMP should be complementary rather then competing solutions
Posted by johnreynolds on March 12, 2004 at 07:53 PST | Permalink | Discuss (14)  

JSR 175, JBoss and AOP: Marc Fleury shared his vision for metadata enabled aspects at the latest Austin JUG.
Posted by johnreynolds on February 25, 2004 at 06:51 PST | Permalink | Discuss (5)  

PD4J - Is Process Driven Design the next big thing?: According to the published schedule, the final specification for JSR-207, Process Definition for Java (PD4J), will soon be released. For those who now work with Business Processes on a daily basis, this is going to be a godsend, but why should all Java developers take note?
Posted by johnreynolds on January 24, 2004 at 13:29 PST | Permalink | Discuss (6)  

Debugging tales - 'Improbable' != 'Impossible': This week my team re-learned the debuggers' mantra: "What you think is improbable probably isn't as improbable as you thought."
Posted by johnreynolds on January 13, 2004 at 14:33 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

Piercing through data abstractions: Data Abstractions are wonderful things, but some times you really need to know the implementation details
Posted by johnreynolds on January 02, 2004 at 06:29 PST | Permalink | Discuss (4)  

Standing on the shoulders of giants....: I just came across a great article by Craig Larman and Victor Basili entitled: Iterative and Incremental Development: A Brief History. You'll want to share this one with your boss the next time the topic of XP comes up...
Posted by johnreynolds on December 08, 2003 at 07:31 PST | Permalink | Discuss (2)  

Adventures with JMeter - Are Open Source tools worth the price?: I've spent the past week reaquainting myself with JMeter to do some quick-and-dirty load testing for an application that I am working on, and that's led me to ponder the question: "Are Open Source tools worth the price?"
Posted by johnreynolds on December 01, 2003 at 09:31 PST | Permalink | Discuss (8)  

Where would the Java community be without "the kindness of strangers"?: Pardon me for blogging this, but I feel the need to rant a bit about the SCO/Linux flap...
Posted by johnreynolds on November 19, 2003 at 12:19 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)  

UML and Process Definition for Java - JSR 207: Why hasn't UML endeared itself to me, and will JSR-207 help to change that?
Posted by johnreynolds on November 14, 2003 at 11:01 PST | Permalink | Discuss (3)  

Field Validation Thoughts: Here at my company our business is all about forms. I’m not talking about HTML forms; I’m talking about business forms such as loan applications, tax reporting statements, etc.
Posted by johnreynolds on November 03, 2003 at 07:04 PST | Permalink | Discuss (8)  

Portability Thoughts: I love the nifty features, but... Recently I attended a BEA presentation for their upgraded WebLogic Workshop. I really think that BEA is on the right track for business application developers
Posted by johnreynolds on October 27, 2003 at 11:24 PST | Permalink | Discuss (1)  

Are we there yet?: Periodically, I like to sit back and take stock of how closely “computers” match my expectations of what they ought to be, and starting this blog seems to be as good an excuse as any to see how they’re doing.
Posted by johnreynolds on October 24, 2003 at 06:47 PST | Permalink | Discuss (0)