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Met up with Sau Sheong over coffee during a weekday evening. I have been following him on his blog and twitter since meeting him last year at a Yahoo developers event. Much have changed since then.

Hardware Programming anyone?

Hardware Programming anyone?

It was interesting to know that Sau Sheong is into consulting startup, putting his knowledge and experience into good use.  Generally the chat was causal and revolve around programming.

Of Java, PHP and other programming languages, there is a observation which I made.  Java seems to be made for the mass. Anyone with sufficient programming training can use Java as soon as possible. It makes it accessible for the masses. Something that on its own a beautiful thing.

Yet I hold a personal baised that Java “takes the thinking away” from the developer. When a problem arise, Java coders will search for the library to do the job. It is good or bad? It depends. As a real life working tool, it is a good idea. As a medium of teaching in schools, it is not a good idea as a first language, but generally a better idea as a tool to teach OO.

Java should deserve more social merits than it have. It have been successful in making programming approachable. Many developers who moved from C to C++ to Java will find that Java is breeze to program in. I been to that stage, but started at Pascal prior to C.

But as the developer mature technically, they tend to challenge themselves and question their tools. That is when some purist will comment that Java is a “Lego-ish” language. Taking the thinking away from the developer. Likewise there are another school of thought that since Java is a first language for many, it means that it tend to produce “noob-ish” developers.  Same concept applies to see PHP developers as noobish as most web developers started off with PHP. I am guilty of such thoughts and did question myself after talking to Sau Sheong.

Hacking, in its core is a form of DIY. And in DIY, there is no right or wrong way. It is always my way or your way, but either way, it is the way of DIY. The spirit of DIY is something to be celebrated. The tool is not essential in DIY. It is the user of the tool that matters.