I want to salute the programmers who have worked on open source projects. Looking at the accomplishments of the open source community I am amazed. I have been working on an open source project for JavaRanch and I have discovered how hard it is to be dedicated to an open source project. First, there are so many other things you can do with your spare time that it is very easy to develop a "I'll do it tomorrow" attitude. Second, because people come and go, it is very easy to lose your focus as the development team changes around you. There is also a feeling of pessimism that can set in as you see a lot of people express interest and then never provide a line of code. Finally, there is a general sense that it's not a big deal because if you don't do it then maybe someone else will.

I can understand why so many open source projects die on the vine. The fact that we have so many successful open source projects testifies to the dedication of those programmers who have participated in them.

I just received the new issue of JDJ in the mail and the article that almost immediately caught my attention was JSF: The Ulitmate in Flexibility? Or Complexity by Steve Benfield. Benfield's article expressed my own frustration with J2EE. The basic question is, why is J2EE so complex? Starting with JSP and Sun's apparent desire to create a Java technology just like Microsoft's ASP, J2EE has gone in the direction of creating such an incredible amount of flexibility that even doing the simplest things becomes difficult. At some point someone needs to shout that the Emperor has no clothes. JSF reminds me more of ASP.NET than it does anthing I want to work with. Why can't someone at Sun concentrate on what real developers doing real applications really need? Why can't we have a way to create web applications that is clean and simple? Why is that we need to look outside of J2EE to frameworks like Struts and Velocity to find even a hint of simplification?

I have a fish tank. I have had the tank for a little over a year and what I have mostly done with the fish is kill them. I could never figure out why, though. I changed the water on a regular basis, kept the filter clean, cleaned the algae out of the tank, etc. I worked hard to make the tank a pristine environment for my fish and all I got was cloudy water and dead fish.

So I got lazy. The fish were dying all the time so I started to lose interest in them. I let the tank go. I stopped cleaning it as much, just giving the filter a rinse every once in awhile. I kept my eye on the pH but other than that I didn't do much. I even cut way back on how much I fed the fish. And guess what? The fish thrived! I haven't had a dead fish in months. The water has been crystal clean even though all the plants are covered in algae. What was going on?

I did some reading and I discovered that my cleanliness was killing all the good bacteria in the tank that break down the bad poisons that the fish produce. In other words, my poor fish were swimming in a sewer of their own excrement and I was killing the organisms that could break down that excrement into harmless materials. Combined with overfeeding I was creating the worst possible environment for my poor fish. My recent laziness has allowed the good bacteria to take hold and keep the tank spotless.

I'm a big Dave Barry fan. I read his column religiously. Without Dave Barry we would never have known that there was a Talk Like a Pirate Day and then imagine how less interesting our lives would be every September 19th. Dave's column on Saturday talked about the phenomenon of over cleaning. He wrote about some research by a scientist named Chuck Gerba (no, really, the guy is a scientist at the University of Arizona). [Side note: Prof. Gerba is famous for his bathroom research.] Prof. Gerba discovered that the kitchens that looked the cleanest were actually the dirtiest. The cleanest kitchens were those of bachelors! How could this be, you ask? Simple, the act of cleaning is a failure at killing bacteria so all those clean people are doing is smearing bacteria all over their kitchens. Those who don't clean leave the bacteria where it is, mostly in the pile of dirty dishes in the sink.

So here we have proof postive in two cases that cleaning is a generally bad idea. So the next time your wife or girlfriend complains about the mess, just tell her you are protecting her from bacteria.