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Chuck Cavaness gives overview of Struts

If you’ve never come across Struts, the de facto Java web framework, and were wondering what it is about, then Chuck Caveness (author of O’Reilly book ‘Programming Jakarta Struts’) gives an excellent overview of the features and benefits in this article on the OnJava.com site.

This article doesn’t mention the future of Struts and the fact that Java Server Faces is to become the standard web framework bundled with the rest of the specifications for Java EE 5, or that Craig McClanahan, one of the main developers of Struts, is involved in the JSR spec for JSF as one of the spec leads. This will undoubedly take some focus from Struts. Struts Shale is where the future of Struts is likely to be (Struts 2.x), which is Struts ontop of JSF, using JSF as the core, and adding to it lessons learnt from Struts.

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Microsoft to update Windows to remove Sony’s CD protection ‘rootkit’

Microsoft have annouced that they will be updating their Malicious Software Removal Tool to detect and remove Sony’s CD protection ‘rootkit’.

A rootkit is a collection of software usually with malicious intent and installed on a computer usually without the owners knowledge to give someone else unrestricted access to a computer. Sony recently took this rather dubious route to protecting their music CDs by installing software on a users machine to detect the habits of the owner of a given music CD, and ‘phone home’ to Sony if the user was determined to be copying the CD illegally, presumably so Sony had evidence in order to prosecute that user.

Obviously this software has got a lot of attention from people upset with Sony’s covert tactic, and in a surprising response, Microsoft will be updating their security tools for users so the rootkit can be removed.

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Article – “Is Ruby Replacing Java?”

Michael Yuan in his article in his blog Is Ruby replaing Java – not so fast”, Michael suggests that languages do not replace languages.

I am not sure I agree with this. Times change, technologies change, trends change. There is a strange trend probably driven by people working in marketing, for product companies to be able to ‘check the box’. I’ve seen this plenty of times working for product companies. Sometimes one of the largest selling points for a new technology based product is the technology it is written with. THink back to the scramble in the late 90s to implement systems with Java. It was the thing to do. If you competitor has already rewritten their system using language X or implemented using technology feature Y then product companies feel the pressure to follow suit otherwise they may lose out in the marketplace.

The other thing, is although Michael thinks that ‘languages do not replace languages’, new languages and new technologies always have a impact on existing languages and existing technologies. Probably for the same reasons – if a new technology comes along that catches a lot of interest amongst the development community then there is pressure for existing languages and or technologies to look at incorporating these new features just to stay upto date with the trends and to not lose developers.

I think this is going to be the greatest (beneficial) impact of Ruby on Rails to the Java EE technology stack. Someone has come along and shown how much easier it can be to build web applications, and now everyone is thinking, ‘wow, why can’t it be like that for us with Java?’. Well it can, and I think this is where we will be seeing changes in Java in the near future.

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