I've just survived 8 long weeks aboard the slave ship "Java" and its harsh master JDBC. 4 weeks of javadoc'ing the most trivial of methods (we really need *2* methods to read an integer from a row ?), of implementing support for the silly garbage that apparantly roamed about the drug addled brains of the architects of this crap.
Several years ago, I made the mistake of listening to some soul suckers that said, "why don't you make a JDBC driver of that Perl driver you wrote for <DBMS> ?" I refused repeatedly, but the Java market climbed and beckoned. So, drawn by an apparent demand that eventually never materialized, I conceded and created a JDBC driver.
Worst decision of my entire professional, if not personal, life.
I charged what I thought an outrageous amount, yet, managed to attract enough customers early on to believe it may have been a good idea. But 2 years later, I learned a hard lesson: Java users demand all, and deliver little. A few customers demanded support worth at least 10x what they paid. I lost untolled nights of sleep fighting with that scourge of a language. Every day felt like a disaster waiting to happen.
Fortunately, I've just released the last release, source code included, and now feel as though I'd been aged an extra 10 years in the past 4, and, having rid myself of the scourge, that I've been granted a fresh 10 years in recompense, including some strands of lost youth (I think my hair is actually get less grey!).
So hopefully this will be a cautionary tale, and a testamonial to how much better Perl is than those languages that the elitists like to trot out to refute Perl's efficacy. I'm living empirical proof: Java Kills; Perl abides.
And now I'm going to get drunk for 3 days, and then sleep for 3 more.
