Evolutionary Goo

If Winston Churchill was a Java developer today instead of a powerful world leader during World War II, I think he might make this quote about Java instead of the Germans.

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
- Winston Churchill, November 10, 1942

Here are some links related to green computing from the last few weeks.

• The Story of Stuff (2008-4-22)
  
• The 5 quickest returns on your green investment (2008-4-22)
  
• 5 habits for greener computing (2008-4-22)
  
• IBM servers run cool to woo Web 2.0 crowd (2008-04-23)
• Six lessons learned at the Uptime Green Enterprise Computing Symposium (2008-05-01)
• HP Desktops Go Green (2008-05-13)
  
• Green IT Numbers Don’t Lie (2008-05-18)

There is a new Java web framework, Web4J, that has the goals of being simple, small, minimalistic and opinionated. I really love the idea of this framework. See the overview to get the full list of features. I worked with a number of Java web frameworks over the years. There are so many ways to build a web application that sometimes you just want something that is bare bones and doesn’t come with a bunch of external APIs. Those external APIs can give you lots of power, but also take time to learn and implement.

However, there is one drawback. This framework isn’t free and isn’t open source. Therefore, I don’t think much will come of it. Too bad.

Tapestry and it creator, Howard Lewis Ship, are back. Tapestry 5 is in beta and has started getting some good press. Here is a great introduction from InfoQ. I’ve worked with both Tapestry 3 and 4 and really like Tapestry 5’s approach to HTML templates and components. Tapestry was a ground breaking web framework a few years ago when it first came out and many frameworks, including JSF and Wicket, owe a lot of their ideas to Tapestry’s early innovations.

For better or worse, Tapestry 5 is a rewrite. The XML configuration files that were criticized in the past are now gone. And Tapestry 5 may be the first Java web framework to include an auto-reload feature that allows you to make code changes without redeploying. Very cool.

I think Tapestry 5 still has a chance for a unique place among the Java web frameworks. It uses XHTML templates over JSP pages. Its approach to development is still through components and not actions. And it doesn’t try to generate any Javascript on the fly. Instead if focuses on working with popular Javascript libraries like Prototype.

It will be interesting to see where Tapestry 5 goes. The rewrite has driven some developers away, while the new features will bring some of them along with others . I think the key for Tapestry 5 is to get some great books out there quickly. Also, it will be interesting to see what Trails 2 looks like. Trails, which is a web framework in the spirit of Rails, will be written on top of Tapestry 5.

OK, I’ll play. I’m not sure how exciting twittering will be unless I find it to be a nice replacement or supplement for IM. You can follow me here. I can see how people are getting hooked on it, however, I think it will be interesting to see if Twitter can sustain the hype.