So.. what’s in the latest issue of JDJ, the only Java magazine left on the market [JavaPro’s a joke, then again, JDJ used to be too… is it still?]
Five editorials. All very opionated, which is good, though it’d be nice to see some form of solid way of responding to these. If it were a website I’d expect to look at the threads of rants below the editorial, in a magazine it’s just a rant on its own.
One about Patterns snobs [Williamson has an accurate point, but blames it on the Patterns snobs. The reality is that people who don’t know the community’s name for a Decorator, and are unable to recognise it as a pattern in a discussion and go find it out are becoming the trailer-trash of the community].
One about the JCP. Valid points again from Ottinger, but afaik he’s wrong about Log4J.
One about extreme programming from the J2EE editor Sagar. Amazing how much text there is and how little it seems to say.
J2SE editor, Bell, calling for more Java evangelists. They stopped preaching and started doing. Maybe Java evangelists have evolved, rather than telling people that JBoss will take over, they just make it take over. Alternatively, maybe the evangelists are all in J2EE and Bell’s J2SE job means he doesn’t see them [I doubt it], or maybe he’s just looking in the wrong place, ie) he needs to read more blogs.
J2ME editor, Briggs, yet another editorial on how the J2ME world is heating up. I’m sure it is, but it just doesn’t affect me yet as I can’t bring myself to get ripped off by the US phone deals compared to the UK phone deals. J2ME moves so slowly as an industry it seems.
Articles….
We get an article on Ant. Whoop-de-do. There are books on Ant now, good books. I don’t expect the number 1 article to be on something I can get a better book on. [The article is a seller for an Ant book by the author].
An article on good news for the Java Universe. Apparantly the Java Web Services world is not dead, there’s all these companies evangelising their products [maybe Bell needs to read this article]. I’m a techie, so I don’t trust it when the excited sales dept or CEO of a Java company tell me how their product will save my life. There have been very few commercial products which have been that good. [IDEA springs to mind, and Eclipse now matches it it seems, OmniGroup do a lot of the same, but lack MS as a real competitor half the time].
Thread Pooling in Java Applications. Looks like a good article. Smells like a good article. Needs to be grokked to see if it is. But at least it’s a good topic.
Managing Java source code dependencies for SCM. Laramee needs to discover Maven or Centipede or JJar. Or subversion from all I hear. The reality is that Perforce is not where you’re going to find the evangelism these days. The only thing this article really hints at is that a MavenUI would be very nice. Typical Jakarta though, UI coders don’t do much there.
Unlimited Encryption on Limited Devices. The first J2ME article. Sounds good. Lack of any code though, so it’s mostly waffle? Looks like a good article though, has that feel, but it’s not a DOing article, more just a heads up on a new player in the world, who may not even live much in the java space.
MIDP 2.0. Article on a spec release. These seem to be easy ones for the Editors to decide to go for. They’re usually quite blah, but well timed. Their existence is to provide a quick summar of the spec, then point us to the real thing. Can’t fault this article being in there, even if MIDPing isn’t high on my list of todos.
Review of JSuite. Bunch of over-priced GUIs, except GUI components require more dev work than server-side it seems. Much more pain to go through etc. So usually it is worth paying the 1000 dollars for the handful of components you’ll use. Someone needs to put together a site detailing open-source Java GUI components.
Review of Adaptive Server Anywhere. Not a bad review, I imagine few will leave their enshrined worlds of Oracle/Sybase/SQL Server/DB2.
Java Awards. These are often the best part of the entire year for JDJ. Although JDJ’s list and readership always mean it’s a very commercial affair. Best book category is an odd one. JMS from OReilly wins. It’s not a bad book, but not amazing. The second placed one is J2EE Applications and BEA WebLogic server. I reviewed this book for Builder, it’s pathetic. Tries to claim all of Java is created by BEA [slight exaggeration].
Best DB: Oracle/DB2/JDataStore/MySQL. JDataStore? Wtf 
Obviously people just choose the one they use.
Best IDE the same way: WebSphere. Forte. JDeveloper. JBuilder for J2EE. Idea takes fourth in J2SE category. CodeWarrior 4th in J2ME category.
Biggest market-share wins.
JBoss takes fourth in best Java Application Server.
The next one is a joke. Best Java Class Library.
* Java.util.Collections
* Oracle BC4J
* Host Access Class Library from IBM
* Eclipse [it’s an IDE! Did they mean SWT???]
That one is laughable.
And so on and so on. Unlike the linux journal awards, these awards exist to make Borland/IBM/Oracle feel good about themselves.
Three to go.
We have a section entitled ‘Spotlight on Open Source’, about the ASK server or something. To be honest, this page is crap. The concept is great, best one in the magazine if you ask me, but sadly Enrique Gil’s article is crammed into too little space and hard to really get the jist. Still, the site is http://www.openode.org and I’ll mention in a later blog if it’s worth a look at.
The Job section is often interesting but useless. Two guys in California give us a view on what Java is like in California, pretty much. This month’s is quite good. Explains a fair chunk about hiring, and if it’s true, is useful information. We have to think about how we describe our previous companies when applying for a new job. If applying for the IDE job at IBM on VisualAge 3000, describe your previous companies as product companies. If a consultant job, describe the consultancy concepts you used there. etc etc.
Lastly we have Blair Wyman’s ‘Cubist Threads’. They’re trying to create a Michael Swaine [cf Doctor Dobbs] and failing most of the time. Blair rambles on about things for a bit and rarely gets techie. It does make for an interesting break [as I read it first, it’s usually more interesting than Williamson’s editorial], but a bit more focus on our world would be good. Or at least make the vague metaphors a little more solid for us stupid folk. He goes on about ‘foosball’ this time, which thanks to Friends episodes I now know means table football. Wish the yanks would relearn the english language, or if they’re going to steal german words, at least spell them properly.
So… why do I still subscribe to JDJ? It’s all there is. Java Report is dead dead dead. Java Pro is useless [I’ve let my subscription lapse, but still do pick it up monthly ish]. DDJ has stopped its Java focus and is now less useful. In fact, the best new Java magazine is Linux Magazine which has a monthly Java section. Go LM.
