Skunk Works

Replace: the whip with any J2EE server ; handcuffs with Maven (but Ant would qualify as well for the ones with fur on the inside) ; leather or latex underwear with several kilobytes of XML configuration files ; 4 or 5 layers of abstraction with hot candle wax ; ropes with meta-meta models. You get the idea.

So please, keep development simple and stop tolerating the pain. There are solutions. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the Java language as such is bad, it’s just overused. Java isn’t the solution to any single problem, there are better and more specialized tools. Who really needs a full J2EE server nowadays (for any other purpose than using it because you bought it)?

Four beers offered by Sun. Two glasses of wines from IBM. Two beers with the ApacheCon registration. One beer from Google. Four t-shirts from various projects (ApacheCon, Geronimo, Glassfish, …). Three agendas. Some food. Frisbees.

A very good experience, not only for free beer but also (and most importantly) for free speech. Very interesting people and good projects. And finally, a decent looking site for Ode.