Why the Java Ecosystem is so much fun after all

I was reading these two threads on InfoQ and I was thinking that Java has had such a big success because starting from James Gosling back the old days and "ending" nowadays with Jonathan Scwartz (SIC!) the Java platform has benefited from several (lots) of the brightest minds of all times. Of course I use Jonathan more to indicate a point in time than a brilliant mind (I'm just joking, it's MY blog after all !).

No what made my day is this:

On one side we have John Crupi (of SUN) evangelizing SOA, and the whole WS* thing, telling us how they basically define, design and publish enterprise services having XML Schema as a fist class citizen: "...whether it's one mega-schema that has all your use-cases and you have to pull out the parts that have been populated or the use-cases are finer grained associated with the schemas at a lower level" etc. Here's the link.

On the other hand, up one slot (on InfoQ) we have Tim Bray (of SUN) who obviously doesn't like what vendors currently do, or trying to do with all that SOA hype, and parts of all this WS* initiative: "...and they are based on XML schema and WSDL, which are two of the ugliest, most broken and irritating specifications in the history of the universe."

So what I did is I had a really good laugh, but after all, these guys are both for real. Obviously they are deeply involved professionals, you cannot laugh at one and disconsider the other. After watching both the interviews, it's sooo easy to make your choice and choose the path you want to go.

So this "being able to choose which way to go", which at a lower level in Java manifests itself by being able to choose between technology and implementations, is available at the concept level also as proven by the difference of vision between these two guys. That's one thing where the Java ecosystem got it right. Being able to choose. But there are lots of other reasons for the success of Java of course. Mhhhm. Mmm.

Which way do you go ? :-D

As a side note, it seems that InfoQ is starting to deliver isn't it ? :-) . Well, that's happening since some time now, what Iwant to say is that now it's becoming more and more obvious. Congrats Floyd and team, and keep up the good work.