Peak Java

There’s an unpopular scientific theory in the oil industry that is really popular amongst the unscientific doomsday crowd on the internet. It’s called Peak Oil.

The essence of the theory is that the more oil we find, the more we suck out of the ground every year, and because oil isn’t renewable (not in our lifetime anyway) at some point the amount we suck out starts to decrease rather than increase. But, we are told, this decrease isn’t a period of steady decline where we all start running our SUVs on vegetable oil, it’s exponential which means production will fall rapidly until the amount of energy needed to dig it up is greater than the energy you get from the oil itself. At this point, no one can get hold of any oil which means the world will come to a grinding halt and we all strip to our loincloths, become feral savages and start building wattle and daub huts in the hills. Grrr.

But I digress.

Java developers have had it good for years and right now it’s boom time. It’s top of the heap in the latest popularity index, there are more Java jobs on www.jobserve.com, www.monster.co.uk and www.jobsite.co.uk than any other language and they pay more. Even Universities are teaching it to freshmen*.

Now, here are your typical skills a Java developer needs experience of these days on your average ‘enterprise’ project:

  • Java (‘core’)
  • JMS
  • JDBC
  • Struts
  • JSP/Servlets
  • Hibernate
  • Spring
  • XML/XSLT
  • Ant
  • Eclipse/IntelliJ

That’s some barrier to entry and it’s getting higher all the time, with the increase in popularity of SOA and Web Services, AJAX, and no doubt several other ‘new’ frameworks and enterprise patterns which I’ve yet to hear about. Here’s a picture:

I think Java-based production is peaking and productivity has long-since peaked — the ratio of satisfaction returned on energy invested is spiralling down.

We have reached Peak Java.

Programmers like being productive. They like new and cutting edge technologies. If I had a fiver for every developer I came across who was learning Python or Ruby on Rails in their spare time, I’d have… thirty quid or something.

There’s change coming. People are talking about it more and more. Java will be around for a long time but the next generation of programmers, today’s hackers who will be tomorrows CTOs, haven’t got time nor the inclination to learn ‘the stack’ — they’re far too busy churning out killer web applications in PHP, Python and Rails.

As for me, I’m running to the Welsh mountains to build a hut and learn to subsist on a diet of grass and rainwater before the oil runs out.

Posted by Olly on January 20, 2007 Comments (4) | Permalink

An open letter to a leading London-based recruitment agent who shall remain nameless

Dear Sir,

Regretfully, I won’t be able to take up your kind offer of “forwarding my latest CV” for the position of SENIOR JAVA SOFTWARE DEVELOPER (no need to shout!) at a “Top Investment Bank” which you emailed me about this afternoon. I feel I lack:

the analytical ability to interpret business requirements expressed informally or formally as specs.

It’s not only this crucial analytical skill that I’m lacking. I’ve looked all over but I can’t seem to find my

exacting fastidiousness about programming, documentation and skills development.

Not only that — and this is more than a little embarrassing — but I don’t think I’m

Self-motivated to deliver autonomously in a flexible, business-led environment

either.

I’ve always thought that a “Top Investment Bank” must have impeccably high standards and be a shining example of order and perfection. You couldn’t make twelve billion pounds a year by being anything less! This job specification demonstrates just how high those standards must really be.

To work in a development team that demands such high standards must be hugely rewarding. I’m looking in awe at the skills and experience demanded by these guys. I’ve been a software developer for 11 years and I still don’t have all the skills that these guys can master in three! Expert-level in Java, J2EE, .NET, Web Services, Linux, Windows, Sybase, SQL Server, DHTML (wow!), Javascript, RMI, REST, LDAP, PKI, XML, OpenAdapter, JBoss — that’s just phenomenal. I can’t imagine how overly-complex, slow and un-maintainable these applications must be. It’s no wonder they get paid so much!

I’m also really impressed by the way you’ve edited the job specification to randomly remove punctuation, structure and any grammatical sense. You’ve done a very good job and it’s such a clever way of attracting candidates with equally low standards for written English. You nearly had me there!

Thanks for your time and, really, there’s no need to call. Rest assured I’ll call you once I’ve buttered up my CV.

With very best Rgeards,
Olly

Posted by Olly on January 8, 2007 Comments (4) | Permalink