For the last time - I really don’t hate Microsoft

…or Java and Sun for that matter.

Martin Fowler sums it up best:

This is important because, as Tim O’Reilly believes, the alpha geeks point to what everyone else will be doing in a few years time. And the crucial point is that the attitude to Microsoft isn’t hatred (a common attitude amongst many geeks) but boredom. This is what Paul Graham means when he says that Microsoft is dead because it’s no longer dangerous.

I frankly just don’t care about .NET or Java technologies anymore.

I’ve been toying with EJB3, SEAM and JBoss to help some friends of mine - they’re doing a serious evaluation of migrating off of Java and move to using Python or Ruby.

This is not a light decision to be making. People who know me know that I make no bones about calling out fools when I see them - and these people are very - very far - from being dumb. Consider the tools that are required for building application in Java these days:

• JBoss
• Apache
• EJB 3.0
• Ajax/Javascript
• Seam
• Facelets
• JSF
• Eclipse Web Tools

How much stuff can you reasonably expect a human being to hold in his head? Never mind all the issues with setting up a development environment, making sure you’re tracking versions properly, deploying properly and managing the risk of a project dying or suddenly changing direction in a way that you never expected.

When python people moan about Django being monolithic and Pylons being a mishmash of tools glued together - pehaps they need to see just how much ‘glue’ is used by those people who live in Java-land.

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