Denis’ Blog

Java is a 15 years old language. And 95% of java projects still have bad productivity and many, many, many architectural pitfalls. Too much academic, too much frameworks, too much options, whatever the reasons are, it is demonstrated quite every day.

Some people help us see the light. Of course some of my beloved Java architects here .But in the outside world we can see good design and good execution. Want to be convinced that Java can be done the right way, helping fast features implementation and high scalability at the right cost? A few examples:

• Jive Forums & Clearspace from Jive Software. These guys know their stuff.
• Jira & Confluence from Atlassian
• Alfresco from…well, Alfresco
• Nuxeo 5 from..well, Nuxeo.

And there is one big, big, big site relying on Java: LinkedIn. Maybe the  fact a French designed the beast helped a lot (ok, for soccer it is over for us guys, let us dream that we are software designing the right way ). Have a look at their presentations.

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No Hibernate, Agile methodology and scalability in mind. Great stuff.

BTW: I’ve connected yesterday to Linkedin, it was down for a few minutes. You can’t have 100% availability. Except of course in PHP….. Just kidding :-p.

Linkedin is quite a fascinating company. They outperformed in the last years Spoke.com or Xing. They did that thanks to a very neat User Interface, very simple, and the right mix of privacy settings.

Now that they have a very good position on the professional networking business, they have to leverage this position to increase revenues and secure new markets. And that will not be easy, since Facebook can in a few months take the Linkedin position.

Since Linkedin is full of top talents, we will have probably a strong reaction, with great new features. Let’s see what they probably will launch in the coming weeks:

• A netvibes like User Interface: I know for sure some top engineers at Linkedin has looked at POSH, a open source software to build a Netvibes like portal (and developped by some frenchies !). It’s a sign
• An API: that’s no secret, Linkedin has announced such an API. That’s a huge part of the success of Facebook, and it will be a big success in the Linkedin world: integration with Salesforces.com, with Google Maps to view the recommanded people in your area, etc…
• Extended Resume: Linkedin is THE place where you want to manage your online resume. So Linkedin will probably extend its services, with extended resume, ability to post to job boards, etc…
• more Semantic: Linkedin is already using Microformats. It will probably go HRXML to be the reference of online resume…in the world