Karls Blog

Running the technology side (I let Artie do most of the talking ;) of Australias largest pure play Internet company (as well as one of the fastest growing) has many interesting and unique challenges. Probably none more so that choosing the technology we use to get the job done. I did an interview last year for a technology magazine that asked me why I had guided WDG down the Microsoft path rather than the Java / J2EE path. My answer was simple - up until that time in the Australian market good Microsoft heads were far cheaper and easier to find than good Java guys:

"Especially in the early days, .NET developers were significantly cheaper to find," says Karl Kopp, director of IT with WDG, which has 22 developers working on a range of .NET projects. "Java developers tend to be a lot more costly, and we're trying to run a business; it was a lot more cost-effective for us to follow the Microsoft path because developers are so much cheaper."

(side note - we now have almost 50 developers and 118 people overall - amazing how things can grow so quickly the challenges of which will be discussed in another blog entry!)

When you are running a company and your number 1 cost is wages and staff related costs, you want to get the best bang for buck - its simple. Since then we have added a Java team to expand our service offerings (and I think a very talented team at that :). They are cranking out some awsome applications which I will be sure to mentioned when I can. They are a hard working team producing quality applications, and now with the cost per head being more even, its a financially viable option for WDG to undertake and deliver to our clients. We still have 3 .NET teams for our 1 Java team, but thats an indication of the type of work we are winning now, not the large cost differences in running those teams.

But I read a very interesting article this morning that I really agree with - Java and many of its supporting technologies are falling behind:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2005/tc20051213_042973.htm

With technologies like LISP and PHP advancing, Microsoft continuing to advance and update its core developer platforms (like releasing .NET 2.0, ASP.NET 2.0, a new Visual Studio (which ROCKS by the way :) and new technologies like DLINK which Dave has some very interesting details on!), the stabilisation of the Mono project and the maturing of AJAX and similar technologies to close the gap between desktop and web based applications in terms of UI performance and design, Javas traditional benefits of cross platform operability and a common client / server language are slowly being eaten away while many of its fundamental issues like its dependance on virtualisation and its large resource drain are being solved by other technologies. The numbers from the Business Week article support that. I see it every day. I dont think Java is dead, I still think it has a long life in Enterprise class applications. But now we have other alternatives that are even easier to pick up and create useful, reliable and secure applications with.

12/14/2005 8:23:22 AM (AUS Eastern Standard Time, UTC+10:00)

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