Enterprise IT
The Once and Future Development Standard
Over the past few months, I've grown to appreciate the elegance of both Java's architecture and implementation--an appreciation born from my experiences with both Java and Visual Basic.Corporate development managers face a development-tool choice every four years or so. At this point in the cycle, the most likely candidates are Java and VB. Looking back at previous cycles, we saw business developers switch their technology from COBOL, for example, to Clipper to PowerBuilder to VB. Each tool offered value given the technical and business challenges at the time. But at the end of the process only the tool had changed; the programmers remained stagnant, with the same old approaches simply translated into a new language.
ReadThe Almighty and All-Important Consumer
Given the necessities of a magazine production schedule, I typically write my column a few weeks before its publication. This lead time has its constraints, the worst of which is that it's risky to make bold predictions; with the pace of change these days, new developments affecting my pronouncements may well occur between the time the column goes to press and the time you read it. This is especially true with a discussion of ever-fluid areas such as Internet stocks. However, in the spirit of living without a safety net, I'm going to take a stab at such future gazing, because the movement of serious money into Internet stocks has big implications for enterprise sites.
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