HTML editors like Hot Dog, Front Page and others made it possible in the early days of the Internet for any person to create a simple web page and easily publish it onto the Internet. Technical savvy folks then quickly learned you did not need an HTML editor at all and merely a text editor.

Today, tools like WordPress and Blogger make it easy for millions of people around the world to publish blogs using standard web technologies. Social web sites like Facebook and MySpace allow for millions of people to create personal web pages using standard web technologies. Additionally, the most popular web applications on the Internet today, such as Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay and Amazon, make heavy use of standard web technologies. Popular Web 2.0 sites, such as Basecamp, Digg, Flickr and Delicious, do the same.

These tools and applications all share a common feature. They make it easy for people to work with and view text documents. Text can easily be moved from one format to the next. It can be formatted, printed, scanned, emailed, indexed, syndicated, copied and pasted.

I do agree that browser compliance has been a big issue. However, the Firefox and Chrome web browsers has redefined what is means for a browser to be standards compliant. This and reusable JavaScript frameworks like jQuery, YUI and Prototype are making cross browser compliance a thing of the past.

The advent of Ajax only solidifies the popularity of the current web technologies for years to come. Ajax is the glue between document centric web pages and RIAs. I have seen Ajax compared to a spice. Add a little bit here and a little bit there. If you think you need more, then add some more. Because Ajax uses standard web technologies, it becomes easy to mix Ajax into existing document centric web pages, while still maintaining the essence of those pages.

Sure, RIAs have their place. Many commercial web sites seek to thrill their users with animation, special effects and advanced controls. Certainly, there is a domain outside of document centric web sites where they are needed. But RIAs will not replace standard web technologies as the dominant technology used on the Internet. Casual Internet users are not going learn how to create RIAs. They are simply going to continue to create effective, HTML based documents.

Documents have stood the test of time. In today’s high technology world, documents allow people to easily participate and share ideas. And technologies that support documents, such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript, will continue to rule the Internet for years to come.

JEvalCharter

Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal and many other immensely popular blogging and CMS software packages are mostly written in PHP and run on Apache servers. And there are countless Web hosting companies that will host applications running on these software packages for less than $10 a month.

I was recently looking into options for creatng an online store. If I were to go the JVM/Java route, I would need to mostly write that store myself or purchase expensive software to implement it with. I would then need to pay a high monthly fee to host the application on a JVM. This would be fine and probably desirable for a large Fortune 1000 company or a Web startup with lots of funding. However, for myself, I want to start with something I can develop as cheap and quickly as possible. With the popular PHP tools I mentioned, I can find multiple free or very low cost ecommerce plugins and themes I can install and have hosted for a small monthly fee. These tools also create Web sites that look attractive, modern and professional.

Although the JVM and Java has revolutionized software with its ability to run on many operating systems, its dominance is only in large enterprise business software. If there is to be a next “big” language, I think possibly it will be one that can bridge the gap between enterprise software and the general purpose software used by the masses.

I am very excited about the upcoming year. The recession has held back many of the new technologies from taking off in a big way on the JVM in 2009. However, JVM enthusiasts have been hard at work learning and innovating with the many new languages and technologies available today. When the economy picks, I have no doubt we will see dramatic changes in the JVM technology landscape.

• Scala Home Page
• Martin Odersky’s Blog
• James Strachan endorsement of Scala
• Lift Home Page
• David Pollak’s Blog
• Scala Cheat Sheet
• Ted Neward’s Busy Java Developer’s Guide to Scala blog series
• Dean Wampler’s Scala Seductions blog series
• Daniel Spiewak’s Scala for Java Refugess blog series

You can click on the image below to go to Indeed.com and see a larger version of the chart.

Fortunately Gone (released in 1990 on the album Pod)

Were Gonna Rise (released in 2008 on the album Mountain Battles)

SpringSource to be Acquired by VMWare

Presentation

Code Examples

Hello World

package org.breidecker.scalaexamples

object HelloWorld {
def main(args : Array[String]) : Unit = {
println("Hello World!")
}
}

// Notes:
// 1. main method is required to run
// 2. ": Unit =" is optional
// 3. Unit in Scala's is similar to Java's void

Hello World #2

package org.breidecker.scalaexamples

object HelloWorld2 extends Application {
println("Hello World!")
}

// Notes:
// 1. Application provides the main method
// 2. The println statement is in the object's constructor

Accessors

package org.breidecker.scalaexamples

object Accessors {
def main(args : Array[String]) {
val person = new Person;
person.firstName = ""   // Try different values here
person.lastName = "Smith"
println("Hello " + person.fullName + ".")
}

class Person {
private var theFirstName = ""
var lastName = ""

/* Overide the first name getter. */
def firstName = theFirstName.toUpperCase

/* Override the first name setter. */
def firstName_=(firstName : String) {
if (firstName != null && !firstName.trim.isEmpty) {
theFirstName = firstName
} else {
throw new IllegalArgumentException("First Name must contain a value.")
}
}

def fullName() : String = (firstName + " " + lastName).trim
}
}

// Notes:
// 1. The firstName property on the Person class is providing accessor method for the property
// 2. The instance variable for firstName had to be renamed to avoid a name conflict with the getter method
// 3. The lastName property is being referenced in the main method  with its default accessors provided by Scala

List Comprehension

package org.breidecker.scalaexamples

object ListComprehension {
def main(args : Array[String]) {
for (val color <- Colors.ALL_COLORS) {
println(color.name)
}
}

/* This is an immutable class */
class Color(newName : String) {
val name = newName
}

/* This is a Scala singleton object */
object Colors {
/* These are Scala constants. */
val blue = new Color("blue")
val green = new Color("green")
val red = new Color("red")
val yellow = new Color("yellow")
val ALL_COLORS = List(blue, green, red, yellow)
}
}

// Notes:
// 1. This example simply shows how to iterate over a list of values in Scala

Twitter Client

package org.breidecker.scalaexamples

import java.net._
import scala.xml._

object TwitterClient {
def main(args: Array[String]) {
val screenName = "robbr"    // Follow me! Try another Twitter name
val url =
new URL("http://twitter.com/users/show.xml?screen_name=" +
screenName)
val conn = url.openConnection
val xml = XML.load(conn.getInputStream)
val status = (xml\"status"\"text").text
println(screenName + ": " + status)
}
}

// Notes:
// 1. Scala uses an underscore instead of an asterisk for its package wildcard character
// 2. Java's network package is imported
// 3. Scala's built-in XML library is used
// 4. This example makes a URL request to Twitter for the current screen name
// 5. It then uses an XQuery like statement to reference status text

The Strange Loop