… at IKEA.

Recently I changed the job. After three years (longest I ever worked for a single company) I left ThoughtWorks. Majority of my consultant career oscillated in .NET space. It was almost three years since last I was doing Java. New job … is Java (packed full of Java technologies).

I had to do some IKEA shopping one late afternoon after work (something for the house). As my journey turned out to be a waste of time (items out of stock) I was sitting in front of the IKEA building consuming a horrible £1.40 Hot Dog Menu 2. Watching the sun set I had a little epiphany! I started new job, I got dropped into source code and I was able to work without relearning Java, libraries and tools.

Then I realised that through three years of work at TW, C# and .NET changed it’s shape a lot. In a mean time Java did nothing,well … almost nothing. C# introduced new language syntax, features, influenced by dynamic and functional languages. Java had got annotations and generics (somehow weird generics).

Is that a bed thing? It gives stable platform, and more consistent syntax in legacy code. On the other hand it lacks cool features, and I do have to admit, I like new features. It’s like every time when Apple releases new iPhone instead of all cool new things on it all you get is better performance and stability

There is also the explosion of languages that run on JVM. I like Groovy and JRuby, I need to check out Clojure and Scala.

There was a lot of fear when Oracle purchased Sun. Next new release of Java will have closures. If it is caused by Oracle’s influence I hope for more to come.

It is about time for Java to make some tuff decisions and stop being 100% backwards compatible.

What you think? Comment me your thoughts.

Cheers, Greg