Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to A Technical Paper on Java

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Posted by Michael Feldstein on

One additional note: why is it that whenever someone mentions a negative aspect of another technology, people are worried about how this suddenly constitutes "bashing." Is it not okay to emphatically point out negative aspects of various technologies? Have we all become so politically correct that no technology can be bad, it is only "not adequate for the task at hand?"

I have no problem with "emphatically pointing out the negative aspects of various technologies." There are two issues here. First, the OpenACS team has not, in fact, rejected Java completely out-of-hand. Ben, given your pride in technical superiority uber alles, I'm assuming that you see good reasons to allow its inclusion in the way it has been included. You even mention some of them in your paper. But overall, you come across as saying:

"Java sucks! (But I guess we'll let you use it for a few things if you really insist on it.)"

That may, in fact, be the message you intended, in which case I would reply, "Rock on!" But is it? If so, it doesn't really do the job of convincing people that the OpenACS approach is the best technical solution. At most, it convinces them that Java sucks more.

Second, even if you really and truly intend your main message to be that Java sucks for web programming, given the fact that language debates tend to degenerate into religious wars very quickly, it's pretty easy for readers to cynically dismiss an attack on a language as another religious diatribe, even if there are some good arguments in it. You'll establish more credibility for yourself if you can show your audience that you are rejecting Java for the task at hand with a full understanding of its strengths. I do think it's worth the effort to go out of your way to establish that you are not a language bigot. You can call that political correctness if you want, but I prefer to think of it as being sensitive to your readers, who have probably read anti-language diatribes ad nauseam.

This really isn't about compromising your principles or diluting the purity of your technical position. It's about articulating your case so that the audience hears what you intend them to hear and is convinced by what you have to say. That has as much to do with good persuasive argumentation as it does with the arguments themselves. You can pay attention to presentation and persuasiveness without selling out your principles or compromising the logic of your case.