Re: protocol explosion (was asynchronous execution, was Re: implementing a set of queue-processing servers)

Rob Nagler wrote:

>The antithesis of this is J2EE, which introduces an amazing amount of
>complexity through protocol explosion (is it a Message/Session/Entity
>Bean, do I use JMX, JMS, RMI, etc.).  It creates tremendous confusion,
>and their software is certainly less reliable than Apache.
>
>  
>
I think this is not a fair statement about J2EE (except the less 
reliable part).

 In the context of what you are saying, it seems as if everyone should 
just stick to using TCP/IP/Telnet as a protocol and then the world would 
be a better place.

But I don't think this is so. Everyone ends up creating their own 
protocols, their own algorithms on top of TCP on how to communicate. In 
a way it is simpler because you just have the freedom to create whatever 
you want. But in another way, it is a nightmare because everyone will 
just implement their own way of doing things. This can be OK in some 
contexts, but I find it difficult to believe that this is the best thing 
overall.

At least with J2EE, for every major standard or protocol implemented, 
there is only one way to do it. With Perl, you actually have more 
confusion because there are many more ways to do it. More ways to do 
templating, more ways to do middleware, more ways to do serialization of 
objects, etc...