Robert works in financial services and has spent many years creating and maintaining trading systems. He knows far too much about low latency data systems and garbage collection than is good for anyone. If you find yourself in a pub with him then do NOT mention phrases like "mark and sweep" or "memory profiling" as you'll be stuck there for hours and, might, be forced to break an ashtray over your own head to get away from him.
How out of date am I?
Technology changes, so how often do we need to re-think our opinions?
I was in the pub last Saturday and the talk turned to programming languages and performance (honestly my friends and I are soooo cool). One friend is the architect for the web systems of a large, national newspaper and he was telling us that Java wasn't suitable for low latency systems. I work on trading systems for investment banks and mainly use Java so was disagreeing with him. His main argument was around delays due to garbage collection.
In many ways we were both right as I was talking about java since 1.3 and he was talking about the last time he touched the language in the 1.1 days. His views were based on (valid) experiences but really needed to be re-examined. Rather than gloat (OK, as well as gloat) I thought that I would look at some of my own preconceptions that could be out of date.
- Windows is not a reliable server platform
- SQL Server is inferior to Oracle
- Open Source products are not stable or supported
- XML is slow to process and often unnecessary
- Talking loudly about IT tends to make people avoid you in bars
From the above you can probably tell that I like systems created in java that are run on Unix boxes and use Oracle as a database - but normally don't talk about it in pubs.
Are my views out of date and by how long? Perhaps they were never correct? The crux of the issue is how often should people re-examine their opinions on technology?
Re: How out of date am I?
Re: How out of date am I?
Feeling behind the times is perhaps the thin end of your experience - at least you know that there are other databases and languages around than the ones you've dealt with!
So, rather than being a pair of concrete boots on the cross-Channel swimmer that is your team, perhaps you're more the tail on the kite of your project?
Answers on a postcard. (and someone call the coast guard).
