By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them

I can remember working with plain old Visual Basic, and being able to provide perfectly good solutions for my employers. At home, I played with Java, and I remember the thrill, but Visual Basic was my bread and butter.

Then, I started to work with a broader range of technologies. I noticed that Java programmers and C++ programmers looked down on Visual Basic programmers. Visual Basic may have been lacking many of the features that were available in Java, but it was unfair and untrue to say that Visual Basic programmers came up short when compared to Java programmers. I was in my thirties then, and I chafed at the implication that my years of work experience counted for nothing if I did not use a truly object oriented language. Software I have written is easy to use, and it has generated millions of dollars for my employers.

Programmers have not changed. They still have their prejudices. When I was the director of R&D for Blastradius, the moment I mentioned that we were prototyping a content management system, people would ask, “What are you building it with?” People were more interested in my answer to that question than they were in my ideas about content management.

At the time, I can remember hearing that Java was the only appropriate language for building a content management system. The marketing guys for most of the mainstream products were bragging that they were providing 100% Java, as if it were impossible to do a bad job with Java. Conversely, many developers seemed to feel that it was impossible to do a good job with anything else.

I have nothing against Java; in fact, I am currently using it and I love it. But, I have to laugh at am emerging trend. Java people are beginning to realize that the CMS tools they have been building with Java are inferior to the tools other developers are building with PHP. I am sure that it would have been possible to build good tools with Java, but Java programmers got all caught up in the complexity they seem congenitally predisposed to wallowing in.

Today, I was reading an entry at IndicThreads written by Harshad Oak. Appearently, some Java developers complain that IndicThreads is supposed to be a Java portal, but the site is based on PHP. As he explains, they use PHP for some good reasons. One of which, and I quote, is that the PHP CMSs seemed far more evolved.

The PHP solutions are superior to the Java solutions, I maintain, not because of the merits of the tools but because the merits of the programmers. Harshad Oaks concludes: “Maybe while the Java world was engaged in talking of high end, super techie stuff, with the words ‘enterprise’, ‘transactions’ and ‘SOA’ embedded in every sentence, the PHP guys actually went out and created a lot of simple yet very useful software.”

We see merit as being an intrisic trait based on talent, knowledge, possessions, tools and ability. However, true merit or real acheivement must be measured by results. As Jesus said, “By their fruits ye shall know them.”