We thought it was time that the readers of JDJ had a chance to meet the editors, those individuals behind the scenes who work tirelessly to bring you the best articles about Java in particular and i-Technology in general.

Over the next few issues, the editors will provide a brief glimpse into their daily lives, their likes and dislikes, why they like to write, and more.

Yakov Fain
Java EE Editor

Q: What's your primary job?

YF: I'm a Java consultant, working for Wall Street companies.

Q: What's your typical day like?

YF: I wake up at 5 a.m. and spend an hour browsing the Internet and writing, then another hour of the same activity on the bus while commuting to work. The next 8-9 hours are spent working for whoever my current client is doing Java code review, writing technical proposals, coding, performance improvements, evaluating third-party tools to make sure that my client does not purchase fluff. After that, another hour of intimate relations with my laptop on the way home.

Q: Why do you write for JDJ?

YF: I like to write and, as with every author, I want to have lots of readers. JDJ is one of the handful of Java-related publications with a really large number of subscribers. Also, being a published author helps me find consulting jobs. Actually, on one of the job interviews I was asked, "Don't you think that your writing will prevent you from staying focused on our project?" Luckily, most managers are smarter than this one.

Q: Do you blog?

YF: Yes, I do at http://yakovfain.javadevelopersjournal.com. This is a place where I can quickly record my thoughts. My blog also helps me to promote my books or Java training, which I run once in a while.

Q: What do you like about Java?

YF: This is a living language with a huge following. It has lots of tools, frameworks, and components, and competition forces vendors to make them better and better.

Q: What don't you like about Java?

YF: It has too many tools, frameworks, and components. You must learn too many things to stay afloat. The days when knowledge of a one front-end tool and a DBMS would land you a job are gone.

Q: What would be a perfect job for you?

YF: Writing the courseware and traveling around the world teaching programming languages.

Q: What's the most exciting project you're working on now?

YF: I'm working on a book called Rich Internet Applications with Adobe Flex and Java (www.theriabook.com). Flex is a nicely designed technology, and this duo will be hot next year.

Q: What's your hobby?

YF: Last year we went fishing. We hired a captain with a boat and the captain said, "It was a great season; I've been working for 42 days without taking even one day off. Tomorrow is my first day off." When we asked him how he was planning to spend this day, he answered that he'd be going fishing. I have to admit, programming is my main hobby. I also love to travel and gourmet food.

Q: Do you have children? If yes, would you like them to be computer programmers?

YF: My son Yuri is graduating from college with a degree in classical animation. He was always a good artist and we let him study what he's good at. By the way, anyone have a job for a young animator? My son David is a sixth grader. He's more into computers and I'll be happy if he decides to become a programmer, but it's going to be his call.

Q: What are the three most important things you've learned during your life in IT?

YF: (1) Be a team player. Never act like a prima donna.
(2) In large corporations, political reasons are the main factor when making technical decisions.
(3) Be loyal to your employer, but always keep your skills and your résumé up to date. The blue sky can turn grey within one day, and then things get ugly.

Q: What do you think about IT outsourcing?

YF: IT outsourcing stinks for three reasons: (1) it hits the weakest, who are mid-age women programmers;
(2) they don't feel secure, hence they don't recommend IT as a career for their children;
(3) half of the enterprise managers don't know how to handle offshore programmers, hence many projects fail.

One great thing about outsourcing is that it makes the IT market more competitive. Just be a little better than a mediocre programmer and you'll always have a job.

Bill Dudney
Contributing Editor

Q: What's your primary job?

BD: Herding cats, oh wait, I mean leading a team of amazingly great folks at Virtuas. We help clients adopt open source and my primary role in that is focused around Hibernate and MyFaces.

Q: What's your typical day like?

BD: A typical day is spent writing (code, articles, training material, documentation, RFPs, etc.), speaking, meetings, phone calls, and more.

Q: Why do you write for JDJ?

BD: It's fun to share the knowledge that I've gained in the trenches. I'd rather spend two hours writing up what has finally sunk in after beating my head against the monitor for 16 hours than having someone else get a bruised forehead. Also I have the wonderful privilege of being able to do a lot of "cutting-edge" stuff and so that is always fun to write about because not everyone has that kind of time.

Q: Do you blog?

BD: Yes, at http://bill.dudney.net/roller/page/bill.

Q: What do you like about Java?

BD: The Java community is doing some really cool stuff in the enterprise space (Spring, EJB3, 16 Web frameworks :-). It's fun to be part of a huge group of such talented folks.

Q: What don't you like about Java?

BD: The impl of Java is not open source, so I'm stuck waiting on Apple to release the next version of Java for my PowerBook…

Q: What would be a perfect job for you?

BD: The one I'm doing now :-)

Q: What's the most exciting project you are working on now?

BD: Cayenne and the MyFaces JSF 1.2 stuff.

Q: What's your hobby?

BD: Creating DVDs of the family videos. I shoot video of the kids all year, then edit them into masterpieces with the Apple video editing suite and burn them onto DVDs to the delight of grandparents on both sides of the family (at least that's what they tell me :)

Q: Do you have children? If yes, would you like them to be computer programmers?

BD: Sure, my oldest (Andrew, age 10) is doing NQC for his Lego Mindstorm robots. None of the others have expressed interest yet, but my 8-year-old is interested in Mathematica, so he might become a hacker yet :-)

Q: What are the three most important things you've learned during your life in IT?

BD: (1) If you don't know what to build, you will build something but it won't be what the user wants.
(2)Users have no idea how to communicate with developers and developers are more or less clueless about business - get something done now and show it to the users. If they are happy with it, build more; if they're not, fix it right away before moving on to the next feature.
(3) Community (i.e., people) is so much more important than code. With a good community you can fix anything, but without a good community you don't stand a chance. This applies in commercial IT development as much as it does in open source.

Q: What have we not asked?

BD: Can't possibly fit my soap box into 450 words or less :-) But the bottom line is that we need open source to have an open and diverse developer community. OS projects that are dominated by one company run the risk of being annihilated by acquisition or another form of hostile action. I have no axe to grind about any particular community or company, it's just a trend that I've seen in the open source commercialization space that troubles me.