Wicked Cool Java

[Owen Densmore]

Well, I've been a bit bitchy about Java recently: Python, Ruby,  
Groovy etc seem so damn COOL, and Java so .. 90's, ya know?!  Well,  
I've been looking into 1.5 and other nifty new Java things, and I  
gotta say, Java is still cool.

The book that made me drop the Python, Ruby etc Kool Aid was:
   Wicked Cool Java : Code Bits, Open-Source Libraries, and Project  
Ideas
   by Brian Eubanks
.. it touches on MANY fun things to do with java, and has  
ATTITUDE!  .. and even Math and Science!  Check it out.

It really woke me up to just how cool Java really is, and with 1.5,  
Java has gotten nifty again.  And when performance matters, Java is  
doing quite well:
   http://tinyurl.com/bruf8
I realize that benchmarks are difficult to calibrate, but when Python  
is 132x slower than Java, and Ruby is 499x slower, you gotta forgive  
Java for its annoyances and start loving it again.

     -- Owen

Owen Densmore
http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org

[Giles Bowkett]

My two cents...

I'm headed to a Ruby on Rails conference in two days, so I'm very much
in mid-gulp as far as the Kool-Aid goes. But that being said, Java
certainly isn't gone yet. There's actually a JRuby project to build a
Ruby interpreter or compiler (not sure which) so you can write it in
Ruby and run it in Java. The Python world has something similar in
Jython. There was discussion about this on the Rails list, basically,
the reason for these projects is simple. When it comes to server-side
performance, Java wins.

Anyway, I've had a look at that book, it does seem pretty cool. The
bits on the music and sound libraries were what drew my interest. It
definitely is fair to say that Java 5 is a **huge** improvement over
previous versions.

--
Giles Bowkett
www.gilesgoatboy.org

On 4/9/06, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:

> Well, I've been a bit bitchy about Java recently: Python, Ruby,
> Groovy etc seem so damn COOL, and Java so .. 90's, ya know?!  Well,
> I've been looking into 1.5 and other nifty new Java things, and I
> gotta say, Java is still cool.
>
> The book that made me drop the Python, Ruby etc Kool Aid was:
>    Wicked Cool Java : Code Bits, Open-Source Libraries, and Project
> Ideas
>    by Brian Eubanks
> .. it touches on MANY fun things to do with java, and has
> ATTITUDE!  .. and even Math and Science!  Check it out.
>
> It really woke me up to just how cool Java really is, and with 1.5,
> Java has gotten nifty again.  And when performance matters, Java is
> doing quite well:
>    http://tinyurl.com/bruf8
> I realize that benchmarks are difficult to calibrate, but when Python
> is 132x slower than Java, and Ruby is 499x slower, you gotta forgive
> Java for its annoyances and start loving it again.
>
>      -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore
> http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org
>
>
>
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