[Embedlets-developer] RE: W hy Embedded Java is floundering

[Ted K. <tk...@ya...>]

Bruce,

>>So, after working extremely hard for years to 
>>help increase the size of the Embedded Java developer 
>>pool I can confidently state that it is going to 
>>happen *very* slowly and it is going to be an 
>>uphill battle every centimeter of the way. 
>>I now know the reasons for this but we do not need 
>>to go into them here.
> 
> "All" it would take to break through this inertia is some very compelling 
> applications.[snip]

Here is the reason that Embedded Java has floundered in the marketplace since
it was introduced in the mid 1990s:

http://tkosan.javadevices.org/misc/embeddedjava/flounder.jpg

Even without the help of very compelling applications Embedded Java is more
than compelling enough already.  It is not compellingness that is the
constraint here, it is the extreme difficulty of becoming skilled in 2
extremely demanding disciplines in order to us it.



> But what about the success of tools like Ant that *do* require people to 
> think and program in new ways? The secret here, I think, is that Ant meets 
> a need which is not addressed by any other solution. In other words, it's 
> very compelling.

Ant is still mostly just Java and it targets a market that consists of millions
of existing Java programmers.  It takes a Java programmer much less than a day
to start using Ant because they can easily leverage their exiting Java skills
when learning how to use it.

My position is that any product or tool that requires an individual to know
both computer interfacing and object oriented Java programming is going to fail
because the Embedded Java developer pool contains an estimated <10000 members
and it is growing very slowly.

At least half the battle here is to simply acknowledge this to be a fact and
then figure out a way to work around it.  If even just for the sake of argument
one accepts this position to be true, what do the possible workaround solutions
look like?


Ted

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