Our message to Java developers creates a stir
August 1st, 2008 by Alex Neihaus
We’re not surprised that our message to Java developers created quite a stir (Sandy’s comments, Alan Zeichick’s post, Dana Blanekhorn’s post, Adrian Bridgewater’s comments and Josh Fruhlinger’s post).
I knew it would, and there was significant soul-searching inside the company about releasing it and sending it to so many developers. I’d be the last to deny we’re promoting ActiveVOS and our company. (That is my job.) But being jingoistic was the last thing we were thinking. I was patterning the idea after something I did in a previous life in which we reported on the incidence of spam, something we were in position to know because we aggregated stats from spam filters. People loved it.
At Active Endpoints, we “know” something about the relative state of adoption of modern app dev technology in the Java community based on our geographic aggregate data that individual Java developers wouldn’t have access to unless we told them. And it’s an interesting data point because it does say something about relative economic advantage that economies with vastly larger GDP — and therefore an increased need to be agile– aren’t demonstrating the same alacrity of adoption that emerging economies are.
Do you think that the open-source SOA companies who claim “millions” of downloads in efforts to promote themselves as viable businesses in North America would have shared this with the community? I doubt it. It took a measure of courage to speak up.
I’d argue we’re being more honest by sharing what we’ve learned in the marketplace than most. And I’d hoped this would signal to the Java community what working with us would be like: we’re dedicated to what we do and we’ll always try to be open and direct. If we’ve scared a couple of people into wanting to move application development forward in their companies, we have arguably done those companies a service, whether or not they use ActiveVOS.
I think you can tell a lot about a company that will share its market knowledge with you and which wants to create constructive discussion about the impact of its technology on the businesses it seeks to serve.
This wasn’t a “buy American” screed. This was, instead, exactly what we called it: a wake-up call to the Java community to look past obstacles and move to the next level of services-based development.
Tags: java development, jingoism, self promotion
