Seeking grand challenges: How do you go about finding a grand challenge? The problem has to be worth solving and, to be grand, should require significant effort with a hope of being solved. » Read more

Design For Exceptions: I'm surprised by Bill Venner's recent discussions on Exceptions with James Gosling and Anders Hejlsberg. Exceptions are one of the best features of Java. I think the problems that Dr. Hejlsberg describes are easy to contain if the development team decides how they're going to handle trouble before they get too deep into their work. Here's what I usually do. — David Walend

It's time to move on: There's been a lot of talk lately about how Tiger (J2SE 1.5) is going to make Java easier to develop with, bringing it to the masses (or as Sun call it, to the "corporate developers"). I have no doubt that this promise *will* be fullfilled. My question is: *when* will that happen? — Felipe Leme

Java Eye for the .NET guy
Larry O'Brien's article Java Eye for the .Net Guy lists some areas in which .Net programmers can benefit from the experience of Java developers. O'Brien points to examples in resource management, unit testing, and community. He longs for a community in .Net like the one he observes in the Java world.

Qualities of a Good Middle-Tier Architecture
In Satya Komatineni's Qualities of a Good Middle-Tier Architecture he describes the two activities of the middle tier as "retrieving the raw data based on input parameters, massaging the data, and delivering the data in the requested format" and then "manipulating the data stored, using certain business rules and processes." He then describes what he looks for in the middle-tier.