9.3. The Next Big Thing
Of course,
the whole premise of this book is arrogant beyond belief. I'm making an
incredible number of assumptions and drawing some aggressive conclusions based
on little more than a couple of dozen interviews, a keen sense of intuition, and a
few massive piles of circumstantial evidence.
Java may need nothing more than a little overhaul. Maybe the problem is in the
massively complex libraries, and a few rewrites with some tweaks of the language
would extend Java's leadership for 10 more years. Maybe the community's culture
doesn't help define our libraries. The driving vendors may do an about-face and
focus more on simplifying the 80% path instead of building yet another XML-
obsessed framework. The JCP could suddenly start supporting the best existing
frameworks based on experience instead of standardizing a good idea that was
born in a committee.
Maybe Dion Almaer is right, and the big companies that drive this industry are not
remotely interested in moving away from Java, and we'll all be saddled with Java
for the foreseeable future.
Maybe Jason Hunter is right, and the next big thing won't be a programming
language at all. Maybe Java's all we'll ever need, and we'll use that foundation to
move up the abstraction ladder. Maybe Glenn and David are both right and there
won't be one next big thing, but lots of next little things, and both
metaprogramming and continuations will play a significant role.
I don't know the ultimate answers, so I've leaned on my mentors and peers. The
interviews in this book are the opinions of some of the people I respect the most.
It's been an honor to share these few pages with them. I'm not ready to say that
Java's dead, or that Ruby is next, or that continuation servers will reign supreme. I
just know:

If I'm wrong, Java will still be there for you; heck, even COBOL is still there for
you. But to you, it won't be the same Java. Other languages will expand your
horizons to other approaches, just as a wave of Java developers will bring our
unique view of the world with us. If you spend some time in Smalltalk, you'll
probably use Java's reflection more, you'll look for more opportunities to invert
control by simulating code blocks, and you may well tone down your use of XML.
(OK, I may have pushed things too far with that one.) If you explore continuation
servers, you may look for a way to simulate that programming style in Java. If you
explore Rails, you'll likely learn to pay more attention to defaults and convention.
Hibernate, Spring, Struts, servlets, collections, and the JDO could all use these
techniques.
Pick up your eyes by learning a language. Expand your mind to something a little
more powerful, and a lot more dynamic. Warp your perspective to functional
programming or continuations. Annoy your friends with a contrarian's view. Tell
them that you don't think the world's flat. There's a whole universe out there,
beyond Java.

About the Author
Bruce A. Tate is a kayaker, mountain biker, father, author, and Java programmer in

Austin, Texas. His five books include the Jolt award-winning Better, Faster,
Lighter Java (O'Reilly) and the bestselling Bitter Java (Manning). His 17 years of
experience include stints at IBM, two failed startups, and his own independent
consulting practice, called J2Life, LLC.

life.

Beyond the C++ Standard Library: An Introduction to Boost

By Björn Karlsson

Publisher:
Addison Wesley Professional

Pub Date:
August 31, 2005

ISBN:
0321133544

Pages:
432
Table of Contents | Index

Introducing the Boost libraries: the next breakthrough in C++ programming
Boost takes you far beyond the C++ Standard Library, making C++ programming