Nov
14
While looking around for Java dependency tools I came across KirkK’s site, and his JarAnalyzer. As usual, I wanted to know a little more about the person behind the software, so looked up his blog and found an article from 2007 there which really resonated with me: .Net : Software & Technology @kirkk.com
Kirk and I have travelled in opposite directions: he crossed the tracks to work on a .NET project, whilst I’ve recently shifted my attention almost completely from .NET and the Microsoft environment (where I have spent the last 10 or so years) to the world of Java. What’s interesting is that he so quickly formed the same view of the Microsoft development that motivated my move to Java.
Microsoft’s greedy behaviour has done so much damage to its reputation and the level of goodwill amongst independent developers. Kirk cites the example of TestDriven.Net, but there are examples of other ‘alt.net’ type projects (NAnt and NDoc, for example) which Microsoft has effectively (though not directly) either killed or marginalised, not with licensing terms but by introducing proprietary (and arguably weaker) competing technologies. I’m sure that part of the reason for that, with the N-prefixed projects at least, was that they couldn’t bear the prospect of absorbing something with what they would see as alien DNA into their product line.
This piece by Mike Hofer describes the NDoc demise and nicely summarises the twin underlying problems: the nature of the development community surrounding the Microsoft platform, and Microsoft’s inability (or unpreparedness) to work with it. Mike’s article, and the linked post by Charles Chen containing the email from NDoc’s founder, make for quite depressing reading. Perhaps the emergence of a mean-spirited, mean-minded community is to be expected, when the centre of its universe is an avaricious commercial juggernaut?
I feel these things especially keenly, now that I’m looking over the wall from the Java community side. The contrast really couldn’t be more stark, more impressive and more compelling. Even the large companies operating in this space, notably Sun Micrososystems, appear intelligent, enlightened and innovative; there’s a very healthy culture here. (A quick and revealing experiment: take Microsoft and Sun – now try to find the corresponding CEO’s blog. Top hit in Google for Steve Ballmer when I tried was a send-up site; top hit in Google for Jonathan Schwartz was Jonathan Schwartz’s blog. And it’s worth reading).
Coming back to the issue of building a healthy community around a technology, Sun’s Java is surely the shining example of how to embrace the great work done by independent developers and build on it, rather than trying to crush it. Just look at NetBeans: this is an enterprise-quality IDE, easily the equal of Visual Studio, but not only is it open-source (and free to download) it also employs established open-source tools instead of imposing inferior alternatives: For unit testing, JUnit is completely integrated; NetBeans uses Apache Ant as its underlying build-system; it can work seamlessly with Maven through the excellent plugin. And you choose the version-control system you prefer (e.g. Mercurial, Subversion) and NetBeans will allow you to make full use of it, right inside the IDE.
Lastly, you are free to extend NetBeans by writing whatever plugins (modules) you please, without running the risk of getting into litigious exchanges like the TestDriven.Net debacle described here, which seems to me to plumb the very depths of time-wasting pointlessness.
I never intended to write all that: it was originally just a reaction to a (rather old) blog entry. But as I revisited the world of the Microsoft monoculture through the tale of those N-projects, it just tumbled out.
Kirk and I have travelled in opposite directions: he crossed the tracks to work on a .NET project, whilst I’ve recently shifted my attention almost completely from .NET and the Microsoft environment (where I have spent the last 10 or so years) to the world of Java. What’s interesting is that he so quickly formed the same view of the Microsoft development that motivated my move to Java.
Microsoft’s greedy behaviour has done so much damage to its reputation and the level of goodwill amongst independent developers. Kirk cites the example of TestDriven.Net, but there are examples of other ‘alt.net’ type projects (NAnt and NDoc, for example) which Microsoft has effectively (though not directly) either killed or marginalised, not with licensing terms but by introducing proprietary (and arguably weaker) competing technologies. I’m sure that part of the reason for that, with the N-prefixed projects at least, was that they couldn’t bear the prospect of absorbing something with what they would see as alien DNA into their product line.
This piece by Mike Hofer describes the NDoc demise and nicely summarises the twin underlying problems: the nature of the development community surrounding the Microsoft platform, and Microsoft’s inability (or unpreparedness) to work with it. Mike’s article, and the linked post by Charles Chen containing the email from NDoc’s founder, make for quite depressing reading. Perhaps the emergence of a mean-spirited, mean-minded community is to be expected, when the centre of its universe is an avaricious commercial juggernaut?
I feel these things especially keenly, now that I’m looking over the wall from the Java community side. The contrast really couldn’t be more stark, more impressive and more compelling. Even the large companies operating in this space, notably Sun Micrososystems, appear intelligent, enlightened and innovative; there’s a very healthy culture here. (A quick and revealing experiment: take Microsoft and Sun – now try to find the corresponding CEO’s blog. Top hit in Google for Steve Ballmer when I tried was a send-up site; top hit in Google for Jonathan Schwartz was Jonathan Schwartz’s blog. And it’s worth reading).
Coming back to the issue of building a healthy community around a technology, Sun’s Java is surely the shining example of how to embrace the great work done by independent developers and build on it, rather than trying to crush it. Just look at NetBeans: this is an enterprise-quality IDE, easily the equal of Visual Studio, but not only is it open-source (and free to download) it also employs established open-source tools instead of imposing inferior alternatives: For unit testing, JUnit is completely integrated; NetBeans uses Apache Ant as its underlying build-system; it can work seamlessly with Maven through the excellent plugin. And you choose the version-control system you prefer (e.g. Mercurial, Subversion) and NetBeans will allow you to make full use of it, right inside the IDE.
Lastly, you are free to extend NetBeans by writing whatever plugins (modules) you please, without running the risk of getting into litigious exchanges like the TestDriven.Net debacle described here, which seems to me to plumb the very depths of time-wasting pointlessness.
I never intended to write all that: it was originally just a reaction to a (rather old) blog entry. But as I revisited the world of the Microsoft monoculture through the tale of those N-projects, it just tumbled out.
