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[isthisthingon]

Here's the post.

So here's the deal and what their announcement was all about.  VMWare acquired SpringSource in October 09 and everyone was like, huh?  Well it's pretty obvious what the game plan was.  The main goal, and awfully ambitions goal, is to compete head-to-head with Microsoft's Azure PaaS platform.

Build:


Run:


Manage:


Perks will love the iPad VMForce focus



Oh I forgot, you don't need to run it in their cloud.  It's open source.  Run it in your own, bitches!  Of course to access the Salesforce cloud directly with its actual data you have to go API or Apex/Visualforce.  But you can literally deploy everything locally and try it all out before selecting the Cloud2 deployment, which lives at VMForce. 

But ITTO, I absolutely HATE Java and refuse to go there!  Well if you're happy with scripting languages and have contemplated Ruby there's good news.  It also supports Groovy and Grails.  Apparently the name similarity speaks for itself, but I'm just digging in myself.

Cheers!

[kurdt]

It's great that these new all-in-one solutions for web development are popping up. There's nothing new really, just ease of use compared to old model where you had to do everything by hand but I really hope this will attract some hardcore coders to try and make killer web apps. Java coders are people too even it doesn't seem like it when you try to code java

[vsloathe]

How is Java hard? It's C++ with object orientation taken to its extreme...

[nutballs]

!hard
annoying.

[perkiset]

I find java essentially ok as a language ... It's all the damn frameworks and Apis and structures and and and FFS. I know some folks that have been working on projects for years now and never get there, because there's always a new way that they should be doing their code.

JavaScript is just starting to get there well. Is it jquery? Jquery with dojo? Webkit? The list of coding frameworks is getting little long ... And the problem is that people treat THEIR framework as religiously as OS used to be. And once you're committed, whoooboy, don't start looking at other frameworks or you'll forever be frustrated.

ITTO it does seem like the prez of Salesforce has a lot of Apple love. And the pad/phone work is cool. 

[isthisthingon]

They're so gaga Apple in love over at Salesforce is silly.  But there's something pure and cool about people who truly see technology without any of the associated factors I'm always considering.  It's just: like it, want it, need it, get to have it now.

The iPad possibilities in the cloud are mind boggling.  It's the perfect cool, thin, mobile portal into the cloud world that wants nothing more from you - the client.  Personally as a cloud programmer I haven't found anything faster than a keyboard to receive my intentions and make it so.  But the day is young

[isthisthingon]

Like C++, Java requires an intimate relationship with your mind to work effectively for you.  It's one reason people hate it.  You can't just script out a stream of consciousness and hope for the best.  It forces a certain level of discipline in a passive aggressive way: stop, consider deeply and thoroughly, then move forward or else I'll bitch slap you later with a pile of unmaintainability 

It's a great language for the architect and the nemesis of the agile.  But if you refocus on a few steps ahead rather than only what's happening right this very second it can be a fine tool.  And besides, it's what a large portion of all the great software is built with today.  I think like CRM in 2000 when companies blamed going BK on their attempts to adopt some "foolish" business approach (AKA SAP draining the blood from companies millions at a time), Java got a terrible wrap by being ahead of its time.  Hardware was not up to the virtual task when it exploded in the 90's and companies betting their product suite future on Java paid dearly.  The Java evangelists were silly fanbois of their time and Java's lofty promises proved nearly as ridiculous as those of religions.

But for what it is, not for what the propellers promise, it's a respectable tool 

[perkiset]

@ Cloud possibilities: I don't see much fundamental work on the 'pad ... but I'm telling you, what we're demo'ing right now with medical apps and being able to have your desktop anywhere you want on the pad is freakin' incredible. Yesterday, I logged into my Win7 desktop on my pad (which was actually running in a cloud on our servers downtown) installed FF and Tbird, then ran Citrix as a client to other machines in our cloud and worked our medical apps. All from a impossibly thin little slice of aluminum held in my left hand ... something right out of a Harry Potter book. (Major kudos to Nutballs who's worked is ASS off getting this stuff pounded into shape)

The point is that the salespeople that "consume" Salesforce will be the real beneficiaries of this technology. Being able to have the entire world in a little slate is going to change things up big ... and the iPad is just the front edge of it.

And oh, BTW: surfing the web via our cloud? Let me put it this way: all my bandwidth over 3G is for the Citrix image delta ... there's no real download time. So when I'm using my cloud desktop, it's essentially full speed on my pad. Now, I use FF to browse the web at 100M blended. So my iPad is surfing and rendering the web at speeds that I don't even get close to at home, on my desktop. Incredible. Really. This combo is gonna shake some shit right up.

[vsloathe]

Java is the only choice for the enterprise right now, all factors seem to indicate.

But when your infrastructure is mind-bogglingly huge and you have an entire team whose only job is to "maintain *this* particular piece of middleware", and you have dozens of said teams, it starts to make sense why this is so.

[perkiset]

Absolutely VS. Java DEFINITELY has it's place. When I was looking at changing my basic design paradigm I looked at .NET, Java/EJB/JBoss and a slippery combo of JS/PHP and stored procedures. The last won for me because I can do it all and hold it all in one brain. What I do would be industrial suicide for a corporation to take on as a design platform. Java is THE only way to do that sort of thing.