It seems that the most vexing question facing humanity has been answered.

There was an interesting post on The Server Side last week, regarding the difference in focus between the PHP and Java open-source development communities. PHP developers are comming out with huge volumes of collaboration and portal applications, whereas Java programmers seem to be obsessed with the latest and greatest framework.

Large corporations are more likely to standardize on a platform like Java for their development, and the people who develop in it are going to be focused on solving technical issues beyond the business domain. Most Java developers I have spoken to are looking for ways to get better industrial-strength software developed in as short a timeframe as possible, thus the focus on testing, integration frameworks and the like.

PHP, despite the claim (which has been around since I developed in it 4 years ago) that it is gaining acceptance within the enterprise, still remains a way to get something out in a short amount of time. It may be quick but I wouldn’t go around developing mission critical software in it – especially since I can’t test it easily (at the time of writing there isn’t a standard package to test PHP scripts – despite the fact the the language is in version 5). Given it’s accessibility and ease of learning many non-professionals may pick up on PHP to get whatever they need out the door.

According to Irishjobs.ie there are 35 PHP jobs and 658 Java jobs advertised in Dublin today – that’s could account for at least some of the difference.

It’s been a while since I last posted. Life can really get in the way of blogging

Having worked with Struts for a while now, I’m starting to agree with some of the criticisms. One of the most common tasks I need to perform is to set up an page with data before displaying it. What ends up happening is that two seperate Actions are required to manage one form. One to set it up, and the other to process a response. And then to make it more confusing, sometimes you need to skip the setup stage, as when viewing a form that was already submitted at an earlier stage. When you get a number of developers working on one system it become really hard to enforce a standard approach. Sure you can come up with all sorts of home-grown approaches for that sort of thing, but I really think that we should be past that stage now. I heard a great comment on frameworks concerning this – that a good framework should be restrictive enough to enforce structure and flexible enough to let you do what you need to. Sure Struts is pretty flexible, but I feel it’s certainly lacking in the structure department. I saw a proposal a while back for the next version, codenamed Shale at the time, that proposed a standard implementation of the two-stage page processing model. It sounded promising at the time but haven’t heard anything recently and the original proposal is nowhere to be found.

The other issue I have with Struts is its tight integration with the Servlet API. Unit testing becomes horribly convoluted when you have to set up session state, mock objects etc. StrutsTestCase helps with the details, but I just don’t think it’s unit testing per-se, it’s closer to functional testing. The WebWork framework looks like it is going in the right direction insofar as the Action-equivalent class deals only with variables set up by accessor methods. Unit testing can therefore be just that – a test of the functionality of the one class – especially if it’s designed to be integrated with a dependency injection framework.

I am not sure how WebWork handles my first issue, but it’s definitely worth investigating further. Struts has been an excellent starting point – it was like getting into a hot bath after having worked with ad-hoc JSPs/ASP – but I think it’s time to look at other stuff. I get the impression that it’s just not moving along anywhere near as fast as it should be.

I spent some time this weekend getting J2ME SDKs off the big 3. The verdict:

• Motorola – no idea what’s going on there. Big download, no emulators (at least not detectable by Netbeans/SunOne) – need to spend some time going through their documentation.
• Nokia – sweet install, no problems. 2 emulators out of the box – Series 60 (fairly high-level colour handset) & Series 90 (PDA type number). Specific handset emulators downloadable when you run an update from the site.
• Sony Ericsson – Mother lode! More platforms than you can poke a stick at. Covers both MIDP 1.0 and MIDP 2.0 phones. I had a heart attack at the quality here – the documentation is outstanding! But the jewel in the crown? On-device debugging. The idea is that you upload your application onto an actual phone, and the IDE connects to it via a proxy that uses the PC’s infra-red or Bluetooth. I can’t think of an adjective that’s adequate. Wow…

One of the difficulties in contracting is working out a rate. Agency salary surveys should be treated warily as their interests lie in getting the contractor at the lowest price possible. As such it is important to have an up to date objective reference point.

ITJobsWatch is an automated service that indexes current advertised jobs, sorts them according to location and skills, and provides quarterly summaries. Both mean and average full time and contract rates are provided, which are based on the figures advertised. Best of all it covers Ireland as well as the UK.

Dim’s off in the states at the moment, so what did I do with my weekend? Hired Splinter Cell 3 on XBox. Holy cow! I thought the first one was good – this was pure genius. I have never played anything that has ever engaged me so much. Graphics, gameplay – WOW!

The soundtrack? Done by no other than Amon Tobin (of Ninja Tune fame)! Dark, sinister and just downright evil – what more would you want for a spy game! Masterstroke! There’s a sample of the stuff on his site. It may well be the only time I buy a video game for the tunes – downright wicked!

I came across a free collection of presentations by the who’s-who of the Java industry from the Javapolis conference in Belgium last year, available at Javalobby. Talks from the creators of Sping, Hibernate, JDO, the list goes on and on… Good intros into pretty much everything doing the rounds.