NASA, Java, and Defending The Title
Like many CtJ readers, I'm a big fan of Wired magazine.
People have noticed lately that Wired has a major interest in (a) the
private sector space race and (b) railing against NASA.
Consider these stories:
* One Giant Screwup for Mankind (negative on NASA)
* Elon Musk Is Betting His Fortune (pro private sector)
* How NASA Screwed Up (negative on NASA)
That's a small sample. The overall theme, for years, is that NASA is a
bloated, incompetent bureaucracy and that the small private
entrepreneurs are much more agile and effective.
I don't know a lot about engineering, and I don't really want to get
into politics (public versus private sector). I just see parallels....
especially with this retort in Aug 07's Letters to the Editor (by
George C. Mantis):
... you [Wired] dismiss government space programs. Yet those
supposedly inept, wasteful programs have orbited humans around the
Earth countless times, erected and maintained numerous crewed space
stations, and traveled to the surface of the moon and back seven
times. Elon Musk... has achieved two failures in two launch
attempts... at the cost of $100 million.
Game on! In the one corner, we have the maverick upstart ventures:
lean and mean, agile, and ready to change the world. In the other
corner, we have an entity, though bloated, that has the title of
Heavyweight Champion: it may be a lumbering giant, but its career
achievement is formidable.
Wait a minute. Lean versus Bloated. Nimble versus Plodding. Hmmmmm....
So if we had, say, Erlang, Ruby/Rails, and Haskell in one corner and
then Java/EE in the other.... then perhaps some would argue that the
upstarts can circumvent the red tape of bureaucracy, and others would
point to the fantastic legacy of the Champion (and its honed one two
punch combination).
Fascinating. Let's order pizza and we'll watch both title bouts....
ps. Naturally, some might argue that there is in fact another
Heavyweight Champion of the World.
Posted by Michael Easter at 7:49 PM
Labels: pay per view at a monitor near you
1 comments:
Anonymous said...
To take your analogy further:
Java did great in pushing the known boundaries and redefining
the state of the art, much like Nasa did with the Apollo
landings.
Today though, Java smells legacy, the JCP bureaucracy and lack
of true innovation also bear resemblance.
I don't believe Java will ever do another moon landing, only
minor satellite projects enough to keep going but not terribly
interesting compared to the competitors.
August 29, 2007 11:45 PM
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