I though it would be amusing to do a redacted blogpost. After all, the assholes with power do this stuff all the time and for things that really matter - life or death matters ... seriously. The stupid blog post is the exact antithesis - things of relatively no matter whatsoever. Were it to provoke one, such a reaction would be quite absurd. So here it is - a repost of an internal blogpost from work replete with inked out sections (or "so much whiteout") like xxxx xxxx. I hope the all-seeing corporate eye of Sauron looming down on the piteous ant I am - above my head, my cube our ceiling and piercing through the clouded firmament shading all humble living beings on this green earth - looks kindly upon my ramblings here.
[Begin repost]
xxxxx xx xxxxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx, here's a little splash on the fire from my whiskey flask:
http://antoniocangiano.com/2008/03/04/rails-is-the-best-thing-that-ever-happened-to-python/
... Some great humor relating to differing attitudes towards marketing (that's the `sexy', in case you're wondering) between the Ruby and Python communities. My favorite quote from the above:
If Twisted Matrix was implemented in Ruby it would be advertised as the second coming ...
Anyhow, read on, because he's not really bashing Rails:
So what does this mean for me personally? I’ll use them both, as I’m a firm believer in using the right tool for the right job.
The last point is the single most important: Use the Right Tool for the Right Job. For the last few years (lets call them the Dark Ages now) in Enterprisey-Land, the motto has been One F***ing Tool for Every F***ing Job. The are also variations on the motto that end in "... Or Else!" x xxxx xxxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxx xxxxx xx xxxxxx xx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xx xxxxxx xxx xxxx xxxx xxxxxx xxxx xxxxxx xxx xxxx x xxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxx xx xxxxx xx xx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xx xxxxx xxxxxxxxx xx xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xx x xxxxxxxx xx xx xxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxxx x xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx x xxx xx xxxxx xxx xxxxx xxx x xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xx xxxxxxx xx xx xxxx xx xx xxx xxxxxxxxx xx xxx xxxxx xx xxxxxxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx [1]x
Of course I don't have the statistics to back this (who does?), buy my perception (which is arguably valid considering I work day and night as a Java developer and mingle with other prisoners of the `Enterprise'), homebrew Java projects outside the scope of well-understood [2] frameworks (Spring MVC, Webwork) almost always necessitate a great amount of design decisions to be made up front. To quote Glyph Lefkowitz xxxxx xxx x xxxxxxx in a recent discussion on twisted python:
A design discussion is an unverified hypothesis. There's no point in developing it into a theory until you have some further indication that it might be implemented.
The Spring team realized this and began a successful political campaign [3] against all things J2EE, and focused on implementations, instead of bullsh**, I-Smell-Fear, specifications. (Notice, how politically correct I am in censoring my own writings. I wish I could put asterisks in my speech as well.)
Design decisions are made up front with most Java projects. However, at a higher level, that a matter of individual programmer/architect or wider spanning community philosophy. The same philosophy could be adopted by Pythonistas, Rubyists or Lispers (and it unfortunately is by some people who haven't read this), and you would end up with similar issues. Note that I use the word `similar', not `same', because the issue is compounded in Java by the instilling of the up-front design into the lower-level implementation. The instilling process isn't optional - it's demanded by static typing. Static typing is not (always) a bad thing, and the rigid stance taken by static type puritans who love languages like Java and Haskell makes some sense when considering the legacy of weakly typed languages like C. But that's a whole another story - but briefly, let's remind ourselves that Python and Ruby are strongly (not weakly) typed, but also dynamically typed which essentially enables you to punch an API in the face (with 2-5 lines of readable code) if you don't like it, or even modify is ill behavior at runtime [4] if you can't convince the stubborn maintainer to fix bugs or funny smells.
Now, one meme that remains in the sinking ship of Enterprise Snake-Oil [5] is that all the conveniences provided by dynamic languages are a wash because the end result is a bundle of cute little scripts [6] which suffer in performance and are hacked out and difficult to maintain. Let me go ahead and call bullsh** on that. x xxxx xxxxx xx xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xx xxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxx xx xxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx xx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xx xxxxxxxx xxxxx xx xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xx xxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xx xxxxxxxx Java combined with our fancy-schmancy IDE and all their attempts to slap developers on the wrist while they pound away on source code have done very little to keep us from sinning. The only solutions to the problems that arise in bad Java programming are enforcing design patterns we're all slow to adopt: beware of the singleton, write components instead of final service classes with static methods (so you can actually write unit tests around things), use Spring (or replace Java with XML), etc. In sum, understand all the esoteric details of the Java programming language (event the transient modifier, if serialization is important to you) while laying out classes and deciding on method signatures - again, these will be irreversible decisions that will lead to hate from your fellow developers who can't pragmatically work around your anti-patterns to facilitate better unit-testing, adaptive integration points, proper serialization, and other goals easily attained with dynamic languages.
Another meme is that Java (or more generally, static typing) facilitates quality (and security) through type safety. On the security front, this is true in some extreme cases - though it's a problem easily overcome in distributed computing by people with smarts. Quality ensured through compilation is of course a joke - compilers don't know the requirements, they only speak 1s and 0s. Ultimately, the larger task is preventing regressions, which can be done only with unit tests. And there are plenty of Python projects that get this very right. Take the unit test suite for the Twisted project as an example:
Ran 4113 tests in 172.023s
PASSED (skips=62, expectedFailures=19, successes=4032)
Yeah, just a few tests there. And yes, that's 172 seconds (not minutes). I guess there are some equivalents in open source Ruby projects. Ruby people?
Ok, so my little blog entry is supposed to be about how the next alternatives to Java are apparently Ruby and Python and my own personal fear is that Ruby will be just the next Java - and people will claim I'm not sexy enough with my old bag-o-tricks in Python [7] .. blah, blah, even though I know in my heart of hearts that "Python is the only acceptable implementation of Ruby". Really, it takes more energy than I'm willing to expend to get into these silly arguments. xx xx xxxx xxxxxxx xx xxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxx xxxx xxxxxxxx xxx xxx xxx xx x xxxx x xxxxx x xxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxx x xxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxxx xxxxx xxx xxxx xxxx xx xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xx xxxxxxxxx xxx xx xx xxxxxx xxx xxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxxxxx xxx xxx xxx xxxxxxxxxx xx xxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxxxxxx xx xxxxx xxxxx xx xxxxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxx x xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx at least one painful piledriver.
[1] EST is an acronym for Enterprise Service Toilet.
[2] Well, let's just wave our hands and pretend like they're really well understood.
[3] There were some problems here as well. It appeared the platform they were running on was build of some space-age cardboard, but on closer inspection, it ended be highly compressed XML - about 500K lines of it. Oh ... And they basically reimplemented J2EE all over again - since that stuff is so tasty, right? The best approach, in my jaded world-view, would have been to slit the Hegemon's throat, instead of knocking it's head with a bat and then proceed to built a neck brace for it.
[4] In Python, this is called monkey-patching (which involves trivial reassignment of unbound methods, functions in a module's namespace, etc), and Ruby facilitates `stepping into' classes. Java offers some incomprehensible bullsh** on this front, which will only necessitate 3 months of training before any developer can partially utilize it - of course it will likely continue to feel like acupuncture in your eyeballs when you revisit code leveraging such awe-inspiring byte-code futzing libraries.
[5] Ahh, rhetoric ... gotta love it.
[6] Yes, you can write applications with modules and namespaces. Isn't that nifty?
[7] This is yet another meme affecting at least part of the Ruby community - Python is some old crusty crap no-one hacks with except dorky research scientists who wear their pants up too high. This is of course nonsense - and to paraphrase Zed Shaw: "Ruby will not lend you more appeal to the ladies." Of course, Zed used his own branded terminology to convey the equivalent concept.
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