Tom Gissel @ singlethreaded.org

I have a serious problem. I’m losing all patience. Admittedly, I never really had much. My Dad often called me “instant gratification Tom”. Perhaps I’m just becoming increasingly aware of my lack of patience as I grow older but I think things are getting worse. In an attempt to fit in with our prevailing societal wind, I will blame something other than myself for my problem. It seems to me, that the confluence of two realities of the world I inhabit are exacerbating my already a ailing patience.

First, I’d like to blame the always-connected nature of my life. Where ever I go, whatever I do, I’m always reachable, usually in many ways. At work I am available via my work phone, cell phone, work-email and work IM (sametime). When I’m away from my desk the number of ways to reach me drops by one or two…. At home I’m available by home phone, cell phone, Yahoo! IM, MSN IM, and 1 of N per personal email addresses. When on the road, I’m still accessible by cellphone. About the only places where I’m not accessible is in church and on an airplane, and only because I’m shamed into shutting off my mobile.

Second I blame data-overload. Every day it becomes easier to acquire data. It would be one thing if the data were boring or random but it is not. It is interesting data. Data I want to have. There are news sites, tech sites, special interest sites, and the latest and largest offenders, blogs. All with interesting data. However acquiring data comes at a cost, it must be processed. And processing takes time. To much time.

The net result of being always-connect and having data-overload is that I have no patience. This works against me in three ways. First, I expect an instant response. When I send an email I expect a response within a day. If I send and instance message I expect a response within a minute. If I get someone’s answer machine I hit ‘1′ immediately in hopes of by-passing the undoubtedly long and boring message. The irony of requiring instant responses from people is that I don’t have the patience to listen to the responses thoroughly. There is so much data out there that I must skim for content. This often results in disastrous consequences where I ignore part of the message or miss in an important detail. Finally, since I expect so much of others, it would be hypocritical not to expect the same from myself. Thus I feel pressure to instantly answer requests which negatively effects the clarity and content of the response.

The sad reality is that as time moves forward things will get worse. More interesting data will become easily accessible and I will become available in additional ways. Something has got to give, and I hope it is not my sanity.

Last week Jonathan Schwartz made a now infamous announcement that SUN would change its ticker symbol from SUNW to JAVA. The condemnation was near unanimous and immediate. A common complaint with Johnathan’s equating SUN to Java was that Java is a relic of the past. Here are some excerpts from the replies to his post

In the minds of many people, Java == slow . . .
Java means slow. Painfully slow. And badly written . . .
Synonyms for Java are ‘Big’, ‘Fat’, ‘Bloated’, and ‘Slow’ . .
Java is a slow bloated ancient system . . .
. . .
. . .
. . .

The postings go on but you get the point. I disagree with the characterization of Java as “slow”. Most objective language comparisons and benchmarks show Java to be among the faster languages around. Certainly not a fast as C but much much fast than the currently popular Web 2.0 languages (ruby, python, php, perl,….). It seems the word “slow” is being incorrectly substituted for another word, “sluggish”. In other words it has a lot of inertia, slow to start, but once it gets going it cooks (thanks to the JIT).

With that technicality out of the way, I agree with the general sentiment that Java does have to change to compete in today’s world. It must become more agile, even at the cost of total speed.

The technical hurdles to make Java more nimble pail in comparison to the cultural ones. Can the Java community embrace a new way of programming and updated language specifications required to enter the new age? Some don’t think so. Time will tell.

Joe Gregorio, a constant tumbling tumbleweed, is moving on to his next challenge. Over the course of the past year I’ve had the privileged of working closely with Joe at IBM within the WSTI. I’ve learned much and come to think of him as friend. I’m sure he will do wonderfully at Google, as he has at IBM. Here is wishing him the best in all future endeavors.