Discursive

A few people noticed that the PDF for Common Java Cookbook was removed from the site a few months ago, and I've been getting a steady stream of emails requesting access to these file. If you want to download the PDF for the Common Java Cookbook, sign up for an Account on this site, and go to the book download page. You can also signup for a mailing list if you are interested in updates. Happy reading.

Mike Loukides writes "App Inventor and the culture wars" on Radar this morning. Here's an excerpt:

"Apple is saying "trust us, it will just work." Google is saying "We'll help you to be creative and make your own stuff that works for you." There's nothing inherently wrong with either approach. Apple's approach is more appropriate for an entertainment device, more like the 60s TV, radio, or dial phone. It does more, but it's still sealed; you can't open it up and hack it. There are plenty of people who want that kind of experience--possibly a majority. Google is opening up the guts and letting you create--and taking the gamble that people who haven't been creative in the past will start."

Go read the full post on Radar.

It isn't a perfect analogy, Maven isn't constantly having to raise money or make tough votes on legislation, but I've always thought of Maven as a politician with an established positive base and an established negative base. Like any politician, there is an established base of people who are predisposed to "vote" for you, there is an established base of people who are predisposed to "vote" against you, and then there are the valuable undecideds. This is the real audience, you don't fight for your base, you try to convince the undecideds to vote for you.

If you were trying to campaign for Maven, you have three options:

1. Convince the Opposition - It doesn't work. If you are deadset against Maven in 2010, you are probably not going to move toward Maven in the coming months unless something dramatic happens. Ok, that's not true, I've seen this work, but you can't make a direct attack on the opposition, you have to cede some ground to gain some ground (but that is a different blog post).
2. Play to Your Own Base - Believe it or not, this is important. If you lose your base, you've lost your support. Maven's in the #1 spot for build tools at the moment, but in technology things can change quickly. Maven's base is under an almost constant assault from people peddling other options. Your base has to feel supported.
3. Win Over the Undecideds - This is where it gets interesting. Since Maven is constantly under attack (deserved or undeserved) we're constantly seeing people Tweet or comment about having to make a decision about Maven. The competition tends to attack Maven's deficiencies, and it is easy to get baited into a fight about the deficiencies of alternative tools.

I published a short interview with Charles Nutter on Mirah, an attempt to modify the Ruby language ever so slightly to create a new language that can be compiled to bytecode. What differentiates Mirah from Groovy, Scala, and other JVM-based languages is that Nutter wants a language that can compile directly to bytecode with no runtime dependencies.

Read the full interview here

Steve Ebersole's wrote a "This isn't a rant" rant on the JBoss community site where he proceeds to attack a series of Maven straw men. I'm not going to get into it, other than some quick responses:

1. Docbook? You have a hard time managing DocBook with Maven? C'mon - I manage a library of books with Maven all of which are written in DocBook. The artifacts are deployed to a repository manager, and the builds are all run through Hudson. We spit out ePub, PDF, HTML using the docbkx work from Wilfred Springer.