September 21, 2003
Standards are a funny old thing
Fancy building an application using web standards and technologies? A recent Slashdot article contains an interesting discussion on the use of PHP. Particularly interesting is the first comment, where the poster compares it to Python, rather unfavourably for PHP.
As a contrast, Simon Willison is proposing that some PHP like features are added to Python's standard library to make building web applications easier.
Meanwhile, Syncato is announced. Its a weblogging software system that extensively uses XML, XSLT and XPath. Jon Udell is a fan. But Martin Fowler is giving up on XSLT as he says it leads to too much duplication and not enough modularisation.
What of J2EE? Well Philip Greenspun thinks it's bunk, and says so here. Well, actually he says that Java is over engineered and not really applicable everywhere it is used. V.S. Babu is the one who extends the argument to J2EE, rather correctly I think.
What does it all mean? I don't know because I broke my laptop this weekend and won't be developing any software, let alone web based, until I master the dark art of display drivers and X11 under the most politically correct of operating systems. Wish me luck.
Posted by Andy Todd at September 21, 2003 10:10 PM
Yup, Java manages to be both over engineered *and* underpowered at the same time.
J2EE? Hmm, well, again there is too much of it. But I *do* like the JSP part, and the standard API allows people to write nice things like Struts to sit on top.
EJBs, OTOH, suck.
Posted by: Simon Brunning on September 22, 2003 11:49 AM