"Airstrike?"

Here, take the radio. If I don’t get back by 2200 hours, you call in the airstrike. —Capt. Willard, Apocalypse Now

Java is apparently losing tech-book market share. The implication is that geeks are losing interest in the language. I think it’s true. Java looked pretty good a few years ago, when the main competition was C and C++. Nowadays, not so much.

But it doesn’t end with the language. Some of the frameworks out there for doing important things in Java are just terrible. From the article:

Still, it’s undeniable that the Web and its dynamic programming languages is upstaging Java.

Uh, yeah. Rather than hiring Python guys and making the VM language-agnostic, Sun should call in simultaneous airstrikes on the developers of Struts.

Struts is the dominant “framework” for Java web app development, so when an unsuspecting project picks a web app framework, Struts is the default.

Struts is like, well, … you know the look a dog gets when you make funny noises at it? That “what the f**k” look? That’s gonna be your face when you use Struts for a couple of days.

“Why,” you’ll ask yourself, “are there so many moving parts?” “Howse come,” you may well wonder, “does my Struts config file look like a core dump?”

Well, bunky, I’m here to tell ya. It’s not because you got stupid all of a sudden.

Version 1 of Struts sucked so hard that the developers decided to bag it wholesale, and to re-badge another web-app framework as “Struts 2.” A slathering of Struts 1 compatibility lubricant is added to make the “transition” as painless as possible.

Like XML? Like typing? Well then, Welcome to Struts Country, coordinates 090264712.