11.4 Conclusion

At one time, I usually traveled for business with two huge bags. They had fancy connectors and wheels, so I didn't need to bear any weight myself. I could carry the whole world with me, and I did. But getting through security got harder and harder, and I dreaded the sight of stairs. I've since learned to strip that pile down to one medium-sized bag for both my computer and clothes with only a shoulder strap for all but the longest trips. Life is much better.

Java has had an enormous impact on the way we write modern software. Yet for all the changes embodied by Java, it suffers from the same problems as every other development platform in history: namely, bloat. The bags are too full. We are at a turning point in the trajectory of Java. The community of programmers is starting to whittle those bags down, believing in their own power to write great software instead of relying on heavyweight, complex tools to do all their thinking for them.

This book is not intended to bash J2EE or any other technology. Designing any broad-based framework is a difficult process. But the state of the art is always moving. The tools we use are changing. The days when large-scale J2EE deployments were the only choice for enterprise development are over. In some ways, we need to take a few steps backward to move forward. We are taking advantage of lighter frameworks, like Spring, Tomcat, and Hibernate. We use better tools, like JUnit, Ant, Cactus, and HTTPUnit. We have lighter processes, like XP and agile development.

Just as the thought leaders are simplifying the core technologies that they deploy, you need to revisit and simplify the core principles that form the foundation of your development process, your thinking, and your code. You need to understand and use techniques that simplify and focus each individual layer of code.

Taken together, we have a roadmap to a better place where the code we write solves the problems we face instead of the problems brought on by our tools. By keeping to the path, remembering our principles, and using good old-fashioned common sense, we can beat back the bloat and write better, faster, lighter Java.