The Pragmatic Craftsman :: Simplicity from complexity : by Stanley Kubasek ::

Pretty good article “IBM tools revamp targets Microsoft,” how IBM is preparing to fight Microsoft. I am giving my support to IBM, as we — developers (and consumers) — need a choice besides Microsoft. As I said before: More competition is always good.

By the way, I’m already using Eclipse IDE and like it very much.

Plus, if you haven’t visited developerWorks, it’s time you do so: they have a lot of usuful information for a developer. I am also subscribed to their newsletter, which is pretty good.

If you follow the SCO vs Linux case, as I have, you might find this interesting. I totally agree with Mr. Eben Moglen, general counsel of the Free Software Foundation, who’s saying that SCO’s legal situation contains an inherent contradiction.

- SCO distributed, and continues to distribute, Linux under the GPL (General Public License), thereby giving permission to copy, modify and redistribute

- No distributor of GPL code can add any terms to the license, yet SCO has demanded that parties buy a license

- Anyone who violates the GPL automatically loses the right to distribute (here, IBM is right, saying that SCO has no right to distribute Linux kernel)

This is interesting, but what SCO is doing is starting to irritate me. I wish, once for all, that if they feel that some work has been copied, show exactly which code, and the case would go from there. Stop spreading the FUD. I don’t know who’s trusting SCO and buying products from them, I really don’t.

This week on eWeek.com they have a Tech Outlook 2004

Outlook on Mobile Computing — personally I think that’s going to be big.

2004 for Linux: grows up (or blows up)

What else, I think Mobile, Wireless & Linux will come out winners, and not only for 2004 but over next several years. Mobile, since you get enough speed that you do not need a desktop, plus more cool gadgets are becoming more powerfull, like PDAs and cell-phones; Wireless, because the technology is just cool; and Linux, because it’s free and getting more reliable and user friendly. Also, everything — all of the gadgets — will get smaller and be wireless: that will make them better!

Read what Gates has to say about Web services and Java.

Where should companies spend the dollars freed up from lowering costs? And where should they spend new technology funds?

Bill Gates: Web services is the new architecture for new applications. Web services are being used to connect information that is inside the company in different systems. They’re connecting people and systems in new ways and companies as well. You think of investments for making your knowledge workers more productive. That is the biggest investment companies in any industry make.

There are things that are essentially new ways of doing business, such as creating workflows to connect buyers and sellers together.

How does Java fit into your computing expectations?

Bill Gates: It is a language that we have supported in Visual Studio for many years. … Our whole thing is to use your existing code, to use whichever code you are most comfortable with and be able to combine that with code written in other languages. We have been agnostic about languages and supporting all the new things that come along.

[Excerpt from eWeek] Read the whole inverview on eWeek.com here.

Here is a short list of very good articles on Java Server Pages that appeared recently on SitePoint.com (very good developer’s resource). For those that do not know it, JSP are used to generate dynamic content on the site — it’s a very good, powerful technology.

Struts (very popular lately):Complete the MVC Puzzle with Struts

JSTL (gaining momentum also):Introduction to the Java Standard Tag Library

Use JSP to get RSS:Use Custom Tags to Aggregate RSS Feeds into JSP-Based Web Apps

Intro to JSP (older article):JSP Quick-Start Guide for Windows

So a whole lot of resources for JSP! Very good job by SitePoint.com

I found this to be an interesting and simple read about Web Services (from Application Develpment Trends magazine). You’ve probably heard about Web Services quite a few times and I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about it, hopefully this can give you a general idea about it and clear some things out.

What is a Web service?The simplest and most basic definition that I can give you is that a Web service is an application that provides a Web API. An API supports application-to-application communication. A Web API is an API that lets the applications communicate using XML and the Web.

So here’s the basic concept: Web services use the Web to perform application-to-application integration. A lot of the hype around Web services talks about dynamic assembly of Web-based software services. It talks about the software-as-a-service business model. It talks about spontaneous discovery of new business partners. My advice is to ignore this hype. It’s possible that at some point in the future some of these glossy images will become reality, but please don’t let the science fiction stories distract you from reality or dissuade you from using this technology today to solve real business issues.

Read more here (ADTmag.com).