It was Ed’s birthday yesterday, hope you had a good one Ed.
And there is also mention of a story on CNET about the ND7 Beta. In it it mentions that Microsoft are trying to poach “…Notes developers alienated by Lotus’ increasing centralization on the Java 2 Enterprise Edition language”.
This sort of thing annoys me, I have yet to meet a Notes developer who is alienated by the move to more open standards. Everyone I talk to decided long ago that the opportunities afforded by learning Java / J2EE are much more appealing than learning yet another MS development platform, and should make life more interesting and challenging anyway.
That’s not to say that Notes developers haven’t been alienated but I think that was because they (an I include myself in this) had not understood the marketing message for the future of Notes and Domino. But that was back at the start of 2003, since then Ed and his team have done rather a good job at outlining the road map for the next few years.
Good developers, in my experience, are characterised by a curiosity about new technology and a desire to learn the latest ways of writing cool apps. Any assumption that life begins and ends with LotusScript is just too short-sighted.
I for one can’t wait for more integration with J2EE, it will make the battles we have to fight to keep Domino alive easier and it will make my life more interesting. I don’t see the problem.
Thanks on the birthday, and for your other insightful comments. I was at a training session yesterday where some of my colleagues and partners echoed your last sentence. I may link to it in a bit…