Re: Describing the Janus

"BobTheDataBaseBoy" <"xxx at rcn dot com"> wrote in message news:UtCdnVNxVuXMYr3eRVn-qQ_at_rcn.net...

> for myself, i've been convinced for a while that java is the worst thing
> to happen to data based development, for the following reason: by the
> mid to late 90s the RDBMS had been around in nearly full form for a
> decade. the COBOL and 4GL folks were beginning to get it.

I don't think it's the introduction of java as such that created the reversion in thinking. I think the introduction of Java marks a swing point in a great many programming careers. A lot of the earlier programmers, who were beginning to get it, were also getting old. For a variety of reasons, programmers are forced out of the field after fewer seasons of play than baseball players.

The Java programmers who took their place were fresh out of college, and quite naive about the sharing of data. They typically had taken no database courses in college, or were unlucky enough to learn SQL from a professor who believes that SQL, and the relational data model itself, were inventions of the devil (present company excepted, of course). By the time they learned HOW to share data, they had also learned about job security and making yourself indispensable, by creating data that no one else understands.

And hence the downward spiral to where we are now. Received on Fri Sep 09 2005 - 21:25:53 CEST