They’re not the same language, and don’t even share any direct ancestry, but whenever I run into nonsense like this:

I shake my fist at the Java programming language, because I attribute this sort of harebrained semantics and/or method naming to the fact that “JavaScript” contains “Java” in its name.

Seriously, what kind of lame developer would create a method on a Date object called “setFullYear” – and have it take a month and a date as well as a year?  Grrrrr.

Flame away.

Downloading and installing the Java SE Development Kit Update 17, which is quite a mouthful.  It turns out that one of the projects I’m working on – a .NET project, nominally – requires Java for some of the deployment tasks.  Yes, that sound you hear is me scratching my head.  But it’s all good.  About to wrap up a phase and feel a bit like Julie Moss in the 1982 Hawaii Ironman – crawling to the finish line.

The good news is I’ve learned a ton about the environment, the configuration, the setup, etc. etc.  So I’m on much better ground to recommend and implement future fixes, should they be necessary.

What else?  Had (or rather was presented with) the opportunity to go back and read a bunch of old blog posts last night.  It’s strange to read myself after the fact – it’s something I rarely do – and it reinforced for me the temporal nature of my posting.  I’m not consistent, thematically or in tone.  I suppose the voice is authentic – it’s actually ME writing, and not some third-party “author” whose guise I adopt while blogging.  But boy, do I wear my heart on my sleeve some days.

Went to the dentist yesterday, for the first time in a while – new X-rays, cleaning, polishing – and my teeth still are a little sore today.  They recommend a salt-water rinse and ibuprofen, neither of which I’ve done.  Oh well.  Spent most of the remainder of the day working, and capped it off with a meeting re: Crowdify with an interested party, so my motivation to continue moving ahead with that project is doubled.  I have a two- to three-month plan in my head, which I *really* need to lay out on (digital) paper, then start knocking off deliverables.

Yesterday morning was my son Will’s first-ever parent-teacher conference, and his teacher Mrs. Anderson is very happy with his progress.  He’s doing well in all the academic subjects; he’s polite and gets along well with the other kids in class.  Seeing examples of his work was both fun and sad – fun to see what’s he’s doing, and how far he’s come – but sad in that he’s growing up so quickly.

Trying hard to fight off the glums today.  Going to focus on work all day and see if I can type my way out of it.  Tap, tap, tap goes the keyboard: tick, tick, tick goes the clock; beat, beat, beat goes the heart.

The focus on the Java-ness of this argument by two NYU professors is unfortunate, as it’s not really about Java but about the mindset of computer science departments and their relationship toward the job market. You could replace Java with C#, VB, Ruby, etc. and it would still be a valid argument.

When I started in CS, I was taught Ada, which I am eternally grateful for. Along the way I was taught C, C++, Lisp, Fortran (!), Pascal. I missed assembly language — <sigh of relief>.

Ada was a great way to learn programming. Compared to Java (which I learned after leaving school in 1993), I believe Ada has a lot more to offer to the new CS student.

(h/t Slashdot)

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Tags: Ada, Java