Dr. Dobb's Journal October 1997
A recent reading of John M. Barry's Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America (Simon & Schuster, 1997) brought a couple of thoughts to mind:
Thought #1. When science, politics, and commerce clash, science is the first to fall. This was true in the mid-19th century, when decisions were made concerning flood-control policy in the Mississippi River Valley, and it's true today, at least when it comes to the Internet, encryption, or just about any other technology-related issue. Of course, the effects of the Great Flood of 1927 were truly catastrophic, with the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people at stake. The effects of technology-related decisions being made today will be much more subtle, certainly affecting people's lives, but not necessarily destroying them.
Thought #2. When a natural force decides to do something, it does it. Throughout history, attempts to control, rather than coexist with, the Mississippi have failed. The river goes where it wants, levees be damned. Even today, experts fret over the prospect of the Mississippi changing course and taking a shorter route to the Gulf of Mexico via the Atchafalaya River Basin, thereby leaving New Orleans (literally) in the dust.
Making a leap (and admittedly a big one), you could say that "natural" forces of sorts are behind shifts in programming language options, Java being the current example. Before Java, available languages weren't meeting programmer needs. For their part, vendors were sweating flat sales of existing language-based products, with little relief in sight. And then came Java, addressing the demands of both solution-focused developers and revenue-starved vendors. Clearly, Java was the right language at the right time, proving once again, to borrow from Samuel Clemens (who knew something about the Mississippi, if not Java), it's better to be lucky than good.
What's amazing is the speed at which Java has stormed onto the computing scene. Four years ago this issue, we asked the question "What's beyond C++?" and examined languages such as C+@, Beta, Eiffel, and Sather. Java wasn't even a ripple on the surface, and those languages we looked at have been swamped by the Java deluge -- underscoring just how slippery prognostication can be. Which, if you can hang on for one more leap, brings us to DDJ's 1998 editorial calendar.
Starting with our January issue on Java Programming, all of the topics we'll be covering in 1998 are at the forefront of issues you face day in and day out. If you've come across a unique solution to a tough programming problem involving these or other topics and would like to share it with your fellow programmers, we welcome the chance to work with you. Unlike most other programming magazines on the newsstand, DDJ is language, platform, and vendor independent. If you've come up with a useful algorithm or powerful utility, we're interested in publishing it -- no matter if it is written in Java, C/C++, Visual Basic, Forth, Delphi, Fortran, or others, for Windows, the Web, set-top boxes, or whatever. What DDJ readers want are focused, technical articles on tough subjects. In addition to algorithms, utilities, and protocols, we're also interested in articles that show how you use development tools, build real-time and embedded systems, create powerful web sites, program system buses (like FireWire, SCSI, and the like), and more.
If you have an article idea in mind, please contact us via e-mail at editors@ddj.com, fax at +1-650-358-9749, or surface mail at DDJ Submissions, 411 Borel Ave., San Mateo, CA 94402. In most cases, the place to start is with an outline or abstract. However, if you've already written the article or paper, send it on in. We generally respond to proposals within a few days; article submissions take longer (and I apologize in advance for that). For more details on article submissions, see our author guidelines at http://www.ddj.com/.
By the way, don't forget that we're always looking for book reviews for both DDJ's "Programmer's Bookshelf" column (contact editors@ddj.com) and Dr. Dobb's Electronic Review of Computer Books web site (contact Ray Duncan at duncan@ cerf.net). Finally, we're always looking for op/eds or special reports for Dr. Dobb's web site. If you have something in mind, send mail to DDJ technical editor Eugene Eric Kim at eekim@ddj.com.
Feel free to flood us with articles. Who knows, we may even ask (and answer) the question "What's beyond Java?"
--Jonathan Erickson