Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Neal Ford is a great thinker, and really great presenter, but he is human after all, and every once in a while we are all capable of getting something wrong.

A little boutique store started presenting jam samples to entice customers. When they put out 3 different flavors, customers sampled them and the sales of jam soared. More must be better, right? So they put out 10 difference flavors...and the sales plummeted. When presented with too many choices, people's decision making ability shuts down. Which I think it at play now in the Java web space.

Well maybe not completely wrong, but oversimplified and unfair. Even the "theme" for the JavaPosse Round Up (which I will be attending this time, woot!) this year is "Don't Repeat Yourself" (DRY), which seems to me to be aimed at the same misconception.

When buying jam, yes, I want to make a 5 second decision and not have "too many choices." When choosing a spouse, buying a house, or making any kind of long term or expensive commitment like selecting a framework I will be using for the next few years, I don't want less choice, I WANT MORE.

Choice is not *always* a bad thing, dammit. The quintessential argument with Java is the plethora of web frameworks. But, and here's the rub, that's a complicated space with a lot of people working to solve the complicated problem in different ways (and much of the problem not being their fault, but rather the way HTTP works). If you are going to select a framework to help there, do yourself a favor and spend 30 minutes, not 5 seconds, or better yet a week, deciding what your requirements are and ACTUALLY LOOKING INTO THE DETAILS OF THE FRAMEWORKS TO MAKE AN INFORMED DECISION ABOUT WHAT BEST MEETS YOUR NEEDS.

Talented people looking at things in new ways, and solving problems differently, reflects on how open and healthy the Java space is in my mind, rather than the opposite.

The fact that Ruby and .Net (or X anything else) don't have choice is not a good thing, frankly (though I think Ruby has 10 or 11 web frameworks now too, so I am not sure that works in Neal's own analogy?). It's this way or the highway bub, is not an advisable way to look at decisions surrounding technology. Being locked in to one approach takes away the decision point, which can be good in one sense, sure, but it also takes away all of your flexibility and power.

If you don't have a day or two to look over the choices (and let's be real, with web frameworks and Java there are a dozen or so contenders in the top tier, really, not hundreds, and many of them use different patterns or approaches, not just different methods to do the same thing) then yeah, use .Net, and also go ahead and bite down on Windows Server Vista Premium and license seats and the like, give up all of your choice over your apathy/laziness, great plan.