A J2EE Moment of Zen - Miguel de Icaza
Avalon marks the end of the American Dream.
Which dream would that be? Or better said, which “American Dream” are you refering to?
See, the way I see it is this: The “American Dream” is itself paying for its sins. But not because the “American” dream is a bad thing in and of itself, and instead because ‘Dreams’ and ‘Reality’ — Well they’re just not always the same thing, now are they.
Miguel, you know better than I do that the “American” heritage began *CENTURIES* before the United States came into existence. As such, it is my belief that the *REAL* “American Dream” is not represented by that in which the average citizen of the USA believes it should be, and instead by the foundation of *FREEDOM* in which the “American Heritage” has been built upon since the day the *HUMAN SPIRIT* entered the *AMERICAS* and called this same claimed land — *HOME*.
So I’ll ask again….
The “American Dream”?
Which dream would that be?
Miguel should just admit that he is really a Windows developer and Steve Ballmer's lap monkey.
The *AMERICAN DREAM* has been dead for decades now. You know, the dream of freedom, of a better life... why bother? It's not better here anymore.
you guys take the "american dream" reference to avalon too seriously!
@andre,
I'm not sure about the others who left comments, but the original post had nothing to do with Avalon. Everybody has their preference of language, and to suggest that his apparent dislike of Avalon bothers me would take every argument I have ever made in favor of choice of language being the single most important aspect of the computing landscape and culture and throw it out the window.
I guess my hope with this was to suggest to Miguel that, coming from him especially, his comments were a bit vague, as the "American Dream" is completely different for each person who pursues this dream, especially when you consider that the US is obviously only one of *MANY* countries that exists on either the North or South American continents.
In all honesty, I really was hoping to gain some clarification as to what his point was. For all I know I could completely agree with him, I just had no idea the exact connection he was making. The dream of a better life? The dream of being filthy rich beyond anything that could be seen as even remotely achievable? The dream of ... ???
Obviously there are a lot of American Dreams, and while I think its safe to assume he was refering to the US version of the American Dream, even that can be difficult to define. Ultimately, I was having a hard time making the connection between the various possible American Dreams, and J2EE. (and I most certainly agree with the generalized notion that J2EE binds and gags the developers ability to express him/herself (although not from the standpoint of *EVERY* developer, as their are those who live, eat, and breath J2EE, and this makes them both happy and effective -- so for them -- have at it! I'm just not one of them, and it seems that an increasing number of folks are beginning to feel the same way... But that topic has been recently beaten to death on this blog, so I'll just leave it at that.)
In a nutshell, thats it. I simply didn't get his point, and was hoping to gain some clarification as to which dream he was refering to such that I could get his point.
@Some Guy,
It's not better here anymore? Compared to what? While there are definitely a few countries in Europe, a handful in both North and South America that I wouldn't mind living in, and Australia in which I have twenty-some cousins whom live there, past these, I would have a hard time finding the "conditions" here anything less that unbelievable posh and comfortable.
It may not be the same place it was ten, twenty, and thirty years ago, but then again, thats not necessarily a bad thing either.
Could you be more specific as to what you feel makes this such an awful place, comparing this to somewhere you feel can be seen as "better"?
@Anonymous,
Miguel's a pretty respected and well know figure head, in whom has been responsible for the development of some of the most widely used open source software on the planet. If this alone was Miguel's only contribution to the world, in and of itself, he deserves a lot more respect than your comments suggest.
While I am sure there are those who would argue against this point, many of us who are coming at this from the Windows side of the development world began to take Linux seriously because of the Mono-Project, as it opened up all sorts of doors in regards to taking our existing code and skillsets, and immediatelly become productive developing applications for any platform which Mono provides support for.
The fact that Linux developers could do the same, but coming from the opposite direction, has increased their marketable skillsets, and as such, has made them more attractive, and therefore valuable, to an increasing base of software companies who realize that a developer with this level of experience provides them opportunities for product development that simply did not exist before the Mono-Project came into existence.
How could this possibly be seen as a bad thing, and even more so, as a way of suggesting that Miguel has "abandoned" the platform he helped build (pre-Mono-Project GNOME/Linux), jumping to the "enemys" ship as a result?
The way I see it, if its wasn't for the Mono-Project, Linux would be a solid 3-5 years behind where they are now in terms of marketability to a broader audience that extends past the current hacker crowd and into the mainstream "average joe" computer user, as what was once "Windows Only" shops have now started to integrate a heterogeneous environment, in which much of the same code thats used to only run on a Windows box, can now be served up via multitude of choices of platforms, processors, etc... fine tuned to take advantage of each platforms "specialties", and if necessary, the source directly hacked to allow for granular level performance tuning that simply wasn't available to them from the Windows perspective.
Put all of this together, and I just don't see this as any sort of indication that Miguel, Nat, and the rest of the Mono-Hackers have done anything but open up the entire computing landscape in ways that without their efforts, could have ever been accomplished.
Why did you bother writing this?
You should be a politician. Alot of talk yet no substance.
@Anonymous,
>> Why did you bother writing this?
Because it needed to be written. I've outlined them further in my comments. You should try reading them.
>> You should be a politician. Alot of talk yet no substance.
How's that? What in this post are you suggesting lacks substance?