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| <title>Interview with NetBeans Contributor Edson Richter</title> |
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| value="Edson Richter, frequent contributor to NetBeans, in conversation |
| about his work, responsibilities, predictions and usage of NetBeans."> |
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| <h1>Interview with NetBeans Contributor Edson Richter</h1> |
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| <td><a href="http://jroller.com/page/brviking"><img |
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| <td><p>Edson Carlos Ericksson Richter lives in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil. |
| He tells us that he lives about 60 km from the state capital, Porto Alegre. |
| He works for a startup company, mostly on development of a new kind of CRM system, using an adaptive technology |
| where the system is able to <i>"almost"</i> learn characteristics of the products and customers. |
| His responsibility in this project |
| is "choosing the technologies, directing efforts, and coordinating resources".</p></td> |
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| <p><h3>Why did you choose NetBeans as your tool for web application development?</h3> |
| <p>I've been using NetBeans since before it was NetBeans... due to its high flexibility and ease of learning, allied to its well |
| integrated modules (also known as plugins). The choice is obvious. From time to time I try other IDEs, mainly to learn new ways |
| of doing things, but NetBeans is always (at least) one step ahead of other products. |
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| <p><h3>You migrated your applications from using JSP/Servlet technologies to using the Java Persistence API with JSF. What obstacles did you find?</h3> |
| <p>Well, I think Java Persistence API (JPA) and JSF are relatively new, so there is a long way to get the same flexibility |
| that we have with JSP/Servlet technologies. But my vision is that these technologies are complementary. An example is |
| when integrating other technologies (like .Net), where unfortunately SOAP still doesn't help much. I expect this to change fast, |
| when WSIT establishes itself. Meanwhile, we still maintain a proprietary XML protocol with message exchange |
| based on Servlets, which just works. This allow us to advance using WinCE devices, J2ME phones and App Servers |
| communicating with each other, using only one code base. But we are looking closely at the advances made with web wervices, especially |
| the new features on Mustang and Sun App Server 9 (Glassfish). The latter is our platform of choice for new deployments, and our |
| older ones will be migrated soon. |
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| <p><h3>You are a web applications expert, so what is your opinion on how web applications will evolve in the future?</h3> |
| <p>I have a vision where users—either people who work for companies, customers or suppliers—will act |
| with systems as if they (the programs) were just other people in the workflow. And I foresee that we will have systems talking to other |
| systems automatically, without much human interaction. I don't expect "expert systems", using artificial intelligence, for a long while, though. |
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| <p><h3>You wrote a JDBCRealm for GlassFish. Do you use it in any production systems?</h3> |
| <p>Since we had a demand for this kind of authentication, I wrote this realm, and we are using it. When an official |
| one comes out, we may migrate to it, because it will probably have many more features than the one I developed. But until then, |
| mine is working like a charm, is available today, and I'm providing support for it. Thanks to the structured nature of Glassfish, |
| and the availability of its documentation, it was a relatively easy task to accomplish. I'm getting curious to see what more |
| is possible to develop and integrate into Glassfish in the near future! |
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| <p><h3>Have you already used Java EE 5 in a real project? What are your feelings about it?</h3> |
| <p>Since our projects focus on the web area, and because our team is very small, all our work is based on JSP/Servlets/JSF/XML and now also JPA. |
| I think Java EE 5 is a real advance over J2EE 1.4. To give you an idea, it took only two hours after I finished reading the final JPA specs |
| to migrate everything from Hibernate (which is old and XML-based) to Toplink Essentials (also known as the reference implementation |
| and based on annotations), and work with resource injection instead. I think I could take similar decisions in the future, when appropriate, |
| migrating some Servlet code into Session Beans. |
| This is one "hidden" advantage of Java... working in layers makes technology updates so easy! |
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| <p><h3>You are a very active member of NetBeans community and a very significant participant in the NetCAT 5.5 program. |
| What is your motivation for being such a great contributor?</h3> |
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| <p>Well, like I told one of the NetBeans engineers, if I was a carpenter, NetBeans would be my hammer! If I can contribute to getting a |
| better hammer, my work will be more efficient and bring better results. Helping people is something I've always loved. I'm always |
| teaching and learning with my employees and colleagues. The better educated Java developers are, the wider will be the acceptance of the technology. |
| <p>I sometimes hear people say things like: "Java is bad: hard to learn and needs too much coding". And so on. I think these are lies that are told just |
| because people don't want to learn Java! |
| I'm trying to change this myth, and give people a better vision... a vision about how fast Java is evolving, |
| how much it has already evolved, and how powerful and secure it is. |
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| <p><h3>What do you like most about NetBeans and what least?</h3> |
| <p>NetBeans is very robust and well integrated, thanks to its modules. What drives me crazy is the NetBeans editor, but |
| it is being refactored, and I expect a lot of improvement in NetBeans 6. In one company we maintain 575000 lines of code, so |
| there the editor is driven to stress levels when changes are needed! |
| There are other exciting features I expect to be integrated in NetBeans in the short-to-medium timeframe, but I'm just speculating, |
| since I haven't heard anything official yet. |
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| <p><h3>If there were one or two things we should definitely improve in NetBeans, what would they be?</h3> |
| <p>Well, something that is definitively needed is visual page designer in the web area. We already have visual mobility development and |
| a visual forms designer for J2SE. A visual JSP editor is a must have. There are good WYSIWYG page designers, but none is able to work |
| really well. I'm looking forward to being able to do visual design in web pages in NetBeans IDE itself. |
| However, what is great is that NetBeans is the only tool tuned to the very latest specs! |
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| <p><h3>Thanks Edson and please continue having fun with NetBeans IDE!</h3> |
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