Rod Johnson holds a prominent status in the Java development community. He is the founder of the Spring Framework for Java, a consultant and author. He wrote the books, Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development and Expert One-on-One J2EE Development without EJB. He also is CEO of Interface21, an international consulting firm. InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill spoke with Johnson during TheServerSide Java Symposium in Las Vegas last week about topics such as simplifying and open sourcing Java, aspect-oriented programming, the Spring Framework, and how .Net stacks up as a competitor to Java.
InfoWorld: What obstacles do you see to simplifying Java programming and how much simplification does it need?
Johnson: In terms of simplification, I think the Java language itself did a pretty good job of simplifying a lot of constructs, certainly compared to the history behind it with C++. And I think that [with] Java 5, the language level continues that. In terms of where we find the greatest complexity, it’s really in the area of server-side Java, and I think we’ve made huge progress in the last few years towards POJO-based (Plain Old Java Objects) development. I think that certainly the reality is server-side Java development today is much simpler than it was with the original J2EE model.
InfoWorld: What are the main benefits of aspect-oriented programming and why should developers hop on the bandwagon if they haven’t already done so?

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