Lately, I'm finding myself rather frustrated with the state of Java applications on the web. He were are, doing a heavy amount of bleeding-edge java work, and it still feels like its 1998 and everyone is still getting the hang of this Java thing. Its heavy, ham-fisted, bloated, but reliable. Its trusted in the industry. I LOVE Java, it pays the bills...I HATE Java it drive me nuts.

Today I found myself fumbling for nearly four hours getting a reliable development environment up and running. But since Java is a pig, (don't get me wrong, I loves me the other white meat), and all the tools I use to help me write Java are they themselves written in Java, my machine is having a _very_ rough time keeping up with it all.

I get my IDE up and running, (there goes a sizable chunk of RAM), I plug in a few helpful, (pretty much necessary) tools, boom more RAM gone, tie it all into JBoss and try to deploy my app...*DOH* no more RAM...no can deploy the app.

So it becomes a game of tweak this, tweak that, do I really need this service running, etc and finally after several huge downloads, config changes and the odd swear word...(okay LOTS of swear words) everything is working.

I find myself sitting back and thinking my GOD PHP is sooo much easier to get going, I'd have been done hours ago. Django is lightweight and simple, again...done hours ago...hell even Rails (of which I'm not a huge fan yet), but no...Java, my first love, my arch enemy...sucks up four hours of my day, before I can even use it...

Either Java needs to go on a serious diet, or I need to sever ties and say so long the language that popped my programming cherry so many years ago. Sometimes I think I'll miss it...but then I remember, thats what pays the bills...I can't afford to leave Java. Then I get light headed as I realize the light at the end of the tunnel is just another Java project...