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also feel a special kinship. We've been through a lot together, and I aim for that
relationship to continue. You've been very good for me and my writing career. I
hope you've benefited in some small way, too.
After letting my readers down by publishing Spring, A Developer's Notebook
before it was ready, I feel the
need to offer some thanks for helping me through the
negative press. O'Reilly, you were great to stand behind me. I felt that I needed to
have this book reviewed exhaustively, to prevent the same mistake from happening
twice. Many answered the call. Ted Neward, Venkat Subramaniam, Michael
Koziarski, Jeremy Kemper, Michael Loukides (who gave me advice and ideas far
beyond the usual editorial support), and many others too numerous to list here
provided good reviews.
Invariably, some reviewers take on a book as a personal mission. Usually, a book
is lucky to have one such reviewer. This time, I had four. Steve Yegge, Jason
Hunter, David Rupp, and Curt Hibbs all went far beyond the call of duty. They
provided help that was stylistic, philosophical, technical, and even structural. This
book is radically different from my initial vision. Thanks to all who contributed.
To Jay Zimmerman and all of those I've met at NoFluffJustStuff, this book is as
much yours as it is mine. You've helped me shape and sharpen these ideas, and
you've given me a platform to present them.
Most of all, I've got to recognize the contributions of one special lady in my life.
She propped me up when I was too low to write, she talked through many of the
ideas, she sat through many boring dinners as I talked through this stuff with
anyone who would listen. Her smile fills my soul with the passion that I need for
writing, and gives me a reason to be. We share a common purpose in raising our
daughters, Kayla and Julia, a common foundation of faith in Jesus Christ, an
unending hospitality for weary colleagues on the road, and a sense of adventure in
life. Without you, I'm nothing. With you, I feel like I matter, and my ideas matter.
You're a bigger part of this book than you'll ever know. I love you always.


When a dominant language or technology is in its prime, there's a blissful
ignorance stage, when ignoring alternatives works in your favor. Figure 1-1 shows
what I mean. When a new language arrives with the power and dominance of a
Java or C++, you can afford to ignore alternatives for a while. But if you don't
accurately identify the end of the cycle, you can get steamrolled. Suddenly, your
competition has the jump on you, with much better productivity leading to better
quality, improved productivity, and more customers. When you enter the transition
time, you'd better start paying attention.
I admit unashamedly that I liked having my head in the sand. It was easy, and
productive, and politically safe. I bet that many of you Java developers act like me.
You may have your own reasons. Living in this shelter is certainly easierdoing
nothing trumps extra work. You might feel saferno one ever got fired for choosing
IBM. (OK, so maybe Component Broker on
Figure 1-1. For a period of time, ignorance is productive, but the ending of that
period can be unpredictable

OS/2 was not such a good idea ) You may have an incredible investment in skills
that you believe will not commute, and if you've invested poorly in your skill set,
you may be right. You may be bound like a Siamese twin to Java by a long-term
project or a group based on the language. Like my reasons, many of these are
sound.
1.1.1. Shaken to the Core
After living in blissful ignorance for five years or more, I had an experience that
shook me to the core. I led a new start-up down a path that required what I'd
consider three of the most productive lightweight frameworks out there for web
development of persistence applications: Hibernate, Spring, and Web Work. I
knew there were slightly more productive environments for this kind of thing, but
they either would not scale (in terms of complexity or performance), or were not
popular enough to justify the risk.
My partner and I decided to implement a small part of the application in Ruby on