The biggest threat to J2EE is its complexity and the perception that it is not productive as Microsoft.NET. I had opportunity to talk few of developers who use Visual Basic when I was doing a seminar in LA recently. Most of these folks are struggling to learn J2EE and often confused about the different options they have in APIs, frameworks, tools, utilities, etc. Many of IT shops those do not employ young, leading edge developers are faced with dilemma whether to use J2EE and many of them considering .NET as a serious alternatives due to its tool offerings. It will be a great loss to J2EE if we loose many developers to .NET . How do we simplify J2EE for new generation of developers and attract developers that use PowerBuilder, Visual Basic or Oracle Forms/Reports?
Simplify APIs
J2EE 5.0 and EJB 3.0 are in the right direction to simplify J2EE by using metadata annotations, remove requirement of unnecessary artifacts, simplifying JNDI, etc all that make a developer’s life a hell.
J2EE as a platform rather than a bunch of specifications
Currently J2EE does not look like a platform but a bunch of specifications and sometime competing specifications such as EJB and JDO for persistence. . EJB 3.0 is right step to simplify component development and standardize persistence layer. Sun and other J2EE vendors such as Oracle, IBM, BEA has to work together to make J2EE appear as a platform rather than a bunch of specifications.
Build Great tools that match Microsoft’s offering
Developer productivity is a big mantra today. J2EE vendors have to go long way to make their tools offering to match with Microsoft’s offering. If Microsoft can learn from Java and J2EE then why not we learn from Microsoft to build tools? We have some great tools like JDeveloper that is making life simpler by abstracting the APIs and frameworks from developers. The leaders of the community need to provide help to tools vendors to improve these offerings instead of discarding these tools.
Java Server Faces is a great beginning and J2EE community and vendors have to build the momentum on simplifying J2EE for developers
More solution oriented books on J2EE
We have a lot of books on different APIs, Frameworks, application servers but not a whole lot on solution-oriented application for entry-level developers. For example, we have several books on building Servlet, Jsp, EJBs, etc but not a very many introductory books that will be a helpful for a developer to build their first J2EE applications.
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