From: Nicolas Delsaux <nicolas.delsaux@...>
Date: 2005-03-30T16:37:35+09:00
Subject: [OT]Re: Java for Rubyists

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 02:56:29 +0900, Lyndon Samson
<lyndon.samson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Something else I find interesting. The hatred towards non programmatic
> configuration files.

I think I may be a good evangelist for that ;-)
> 
> Programmatic configuration is great for programmers, but where would
> the average application user be without simple, hard to mess up
> configuration, like sendmail.cf for example :-)

Or a kind of YAML file ?
> 
> Or perhaps the bile is directed only at the overly verbose XML?

Not only. I have the strong belief that most of a J2EE app config is
in fact code. As an example, take any Struts application. Could the
action objects work without the struts-config file (which defines, for
the know-not, the mapping between an URL, a Java Action, and the
various depending JSP) ?  Certainly not. And so, that ugly and huge
file is in fact code, hidden in configuration. It's bad.
The same can be said about most O/R mapping tools. Each time some code
is strongly tied to a configuration file, it's the obvious sign that
this is not configuration, but code.

The argument of the lack for meta-programming in Java was before told.
It was a weakness of Java. But, with Java5, came (as I already
mentionned) annotations, which are (to my mind) the biggest
modification incorporated since Java 1. Those annotations provide a
way to extend java semantic according to *your* needs. I firmly
believe that, soon, Struts, Hibernate, and the such, will move all the
XML data in annotations, like XDoclet used to do, in fact.


-- 
Nicolas Delsaux
"Un langage de programmation est cens� �tre une fa�on conventionnelle
de donner des ordres � un ordinateur. Il n'est pas cens� �tre obscur,
bizarre et plein de pi�ges subtils (�a ce sont les attributs de la
magie)."
Dave Small