One additional note: why is it that whenever someone
mentions a negative aspect of another technology, people are
worried about how this suddenly constitutes "bashing." Is it not
okay to emphatically point out negative aspects of various
technologies? Have we all become so politically correct that no
technology can be bad, it is only "not adequate for the task at
hand?"
I have no problem with "emphatically pointing out the
negative aspects of various technologies." There are two issues
here. First, the OpenACS team has not, in fact, rejected Java
completely out-of-hand. Ben, given your pride in technical
superiority uber alles, I'm assuming that you see good reasons
to allow its inclusion in the way it has been included. You even
mention some of them in your paper. But overall, you come
across as saying:
"Java sucks! (But I guess we'll let you use it for a few things
if you really insist on it.)"
That may, in fact, be the message you intended, in which
case I would reply, "Rock on!" But is it? If so, it doesn't really do
the job of convincing people that the OpenACS approach is the
best technical solution. At most, it convinces them that Java
sucks more.
Second, even if you really and truly intend your main
message to be that Java sucks for web programming, given the
fact that language debates tend to degenerate into religious
wars very quickly, it's pretty easy for readers to cynically dismiss
an attack on a language as another religious diatribe, even if
there are some good arguments in it. You'll establish more
credibility for yourself if you can show your audience that you are
rejecting Java for the task at hand with a full understanding of
its strengths. I do think it's worth the effort to go out of your
way to establish that you are not a language bigot. You can call
that political correctness if you want, but I prefer to think of it as
being sensitive to your readers, who have probably read
anti-language diatribes ad nauseam.
This really isn't about compromising your principles or
diluting the purity of your technical position. It's about articulating
your case so that the audience hears what you intend them to
hear and is convinced by what you have to say. That has as
much to do with good persuasive argumentation as it does with
the arguments themselves. You can pay attention to
presentation and persuasiveness without selling out your
principles or compromising the logic of your case.
