posted 18 years ago
Perhaps if we said 'Java is the only programming technology you'll ever need' I would see the point. But the fact is, nothing survives solely on the thing it advocates or sells. Sun is not certainly not Java pure, much less Solaris pure. Microsoft isn't even remotely close to using Windows for all its needs. Even Bank of America keeps some of its accounts in other banks.
As the write-up says, we used something ready-made to get started. The place was set up to create a friendly space for Java greenhorns -- not prove the technology's viability in every way.
Neither is it a small thing to replace one technology with another solely for this reason. I would guess the success rate of the few attempts made at such a thing probably falls below 1%.
Now if Java could dramatically improve on UBB, there might be something to talk about. So how could Java do that? Well, what are its key virtues?
Platform portability -- not strange to Perl.
Rapid development -- but useful, if not perfect, code is already here.
There's two? What others can you think of that, properly exploited, makes the re-coding a compelling move?
If it's just about the poetic justice of eating what one cooks, I can see that, but it's just not a good enough reason for the effort involved.
Incidentally, I once did exactly this sort of thing for a Circle MUD. We thought it would be cool. We did not think it would be the enormous effort that it was, nor did we anticipate the enormous resistance to code that might work replacing code that did work.
There's a *whole* lot more to it than just pointing and asking 'isn't that an embarrassing inconsistency?'
Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.
- Robert Bresson