Integration

Sean McGrath, dynamic language advocate and Jython provocateur (!?), writes...

Psssssst: every time you use a JAR/CLASS you don't control, you have yourself an integration problem :-)

Heed the call. Consider a recent topic in this blog...

I asked the question about the dotnet CLR (or CLS or something), why would you want one way to integrate outside the VM and another way to integrate inside the VM?

The counter example to this dichotomous approach is Erlang/OTP which is a scalable, robust, productized demonstration that a simple integration mechanism is suitable to both integration scenarios.

Let's complete this post by repeating Sean's message...

Every time you use a JAR/Assembly/Class/Object/API you don't control, you have an integration problem!

And even when you do control them, if they are heavily used, you have essentially the same integration problem, which is the reluctance, cost, time, perhaps inability, to change them with agility.