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JDJ... uh... ouch. It sucks again.
I'm stunned. As a former editor-in-chief, I can only marvel at what's happened there. Alan Williamson started to correct the course of the magazine after it's slightly, uh, biased approach of a few years ago, I took over from him with the goal of trying to tune the balance of the magazine's content... and after I quit, well... six months later, it's wearing garish facepaint and shouting things from a position of bias again.
It's not that it's uninformative in ways - the articles on portlets, for example, are surprisingly useful once you get past the unintentional humour of having to see how to set up Maven, then Tomcat, and then, finally, a portlet container - in which you can develop portlets, ostensibly the thrust of the article. Plus, the articles on EJB 3 and a few other things are useful.
This is all good - work I'd have been proud to have been part of (and, depending on the timing of publication, work I was part of).
But... honestly, past that, it's almost like the vetting process has fallen apart, top to bottom.
Metaboss' article on JNDI... yikes, I was begging people to write an article on the basics and purpose of JNDI in J2EE. And there one was... except the article generally skipped AWAY from JNDI and ended up talking about Metaboss! This isn't an article - it's an ad. For Metaboss. What moron editor let this through?
The article on personalization... um... yikes again. I've done personalization in applications; for some reason, I don't see this article's content as being, you know, relevant. In the real world. Where people actually want to get stuff done.
The viewpoint, on J2EE in jeopardy... oh, geez. The author takes pains to say he doesn't see J2EE as being in jeopardy, but constantly points out areas in which it's, you know, in jeopardy. I understand his message and thrust, but let's be real: he's trying to toe the line for JDJ, which corrupts the purity of his real message, which presumably isn't "I'm an asshat."
I am very proud of what Joe Winchester, Calvin Austin, and Bill Dudney are writing - as editors, their commentary is actually extraordinarily useful, honestly. But the rest of it... I have to wonder what the heck JDJ is doing, why they're corrupting themselves - AGAIN.
And I think about what it would take to replace JDJ in the eyes of the Java developer at large. Right now, it wouldn't need much - two-dollar whores can be found anywhere.
There's nothing better than reading "two-dollar whores" in a blog
entry!
Matt Raible
Joe,
Why the hell don't you, Charles Miller, Matt Raible, Alan Williamson and a couple of other people that know how to write both code and articles get together and build your own rag? If JDJ annoys you, then it probably annoys the hell out the regular reader too. When Alan left he made reference to thinking about it, but didn't actually do it. Bill Joy is probably looking for something to do, surely you or Alan can get your 6 degrees working and pull him in to back it.
I am an outsider, I know nothing about running a magazine but as a reader I know that having good articles on a regular basis is what I would rather have than article-tisements. No Fluff Just Stuff works because of a lack of sales pitches, maybe Jay would be interested in getting involved.
Just a couple of ideas from a reader.
Carl Fyffe [carl@sixty4bit.com]
You know what they say, "you get what you pay for." They don't pay for the
articles so half of them are written by marketing departments that are used
to giving crap away. Half their readers get the magazine for free so they
aren't surprised that it is full of crap. The only fools are the
advertisers who seem to think anyone is actually reading any of this
crap.
Yes, I do know what they say. That was probably the greatest annoyance
about JDJ - and one I was trying to battle internally. I'd mapped out a way
to really get the magazine where I thought it should be, at the forefront
of Java technology *and* catering to the various groups who needed to know
about it, and I felt that Sys-Con had its antennae alert to any buzzwords
like "paying our authors" such that they'd be able to shoot it down or
ignore any such plan.
It's really sad, honestly, and I felt like I got the worst of it from all sides: the readers felt that I was a number of steps down from Alan (which was probably true, but not as much as they indicated, I hope!) and the insiders felt like I was a gadfly trying to change the status quo, which was working for them, and the authors sometimes thought the remuneration policy was my idea.
It wasn't an especially pleasant tour of duty.
Ya'll should help the javalobby site then. They are promoting the heck out
of getting good technical writers to write good articles related to actual
technical issues with Java. I am *still* working on one regarding the swing
event thread and focus issues, but there are some other good articles at
times. If we can't have a pay-for magazine that can pay authors a little
mula, I'd at least like to see (and contribute) to a site or two that
promote a good online resource of technical information.
Kevin
Hey as the author of the editorial, it was intended as a motivational _call
to action_ to our community to speak up to casual readers about how
effective java/j2ee has become because of grassroots good efforts, and how
the j2ee technology platform has become stronger because of it. It less
about the future of the as-is standard per say, but more about what's
happened to make what's already there better (through innovation, not
reinvention.)
I didn't get any money from JDJ for my contribution if that's what your implying, I was just trying to make casual readers aware of the issues--what's _reallying_ going on in open source, to make them feel more confident in java as a software delivery platform.
I remember how hard it was to source contributions when JDJ dropped their
pay rate from 75 per page to 75 per article. It became almost impossible
when they went from 75 per article to nothing -- the official line being
something like "it's a privilege to get published" and "it'll look good on
the author's CV", etc. Someone with experience, and who has been
published before, just doesn't care about that 'privilege' and also isn't
particularly interested in another line in their CV. So on that basis it's
hard to attract anyone other than first time authors and advertisements
masquerading as articles.
I don't think another competing magazine is needed. There are better alternatives: ONJava seems to me to be a worthy successor -- and they do pay for their content, which is rather refreshing.
JRB
Hi Joe !
I just would like to set the record straight on
the JNDI
article in the December JDJ.
You have said - "I was begging people to write an article on the basics and purpose of JNDI in J2EE". I am not sure what makes you think that my article is promissing to achieve that and therefore is misleading.
The article is about an elegant software solution, based on JNDI standard.
The solution itself is 100% Open Source and available separately from MetaBoss product. The size of SourceForge download for this solution is 22KBytes vs. size of MetaBoss download of 54MBytes. MetaBoss offers far more than this tiny JNDI mechanism and any suggestion that this article is an advertisement is complete nonsence.
As
the passionate software professional I wanted to share an interesting way
to use JNDI with people who already know the basics. If you know any better
forum to do that, please let me know.
And then JDJ can keep reprinting
glorified tutorials from Sun Java site for your enjoyment.
Kind regards
Rost
Rost Vashevnik [rost@metaboss.com]