I’m not very in touch with Java these days, but watching the experience of others with new technologies such as you mention, (ruby, AS3 and their frameworks) it makes me wonder where there is a role for J2EE on new systems … if you had a choice. If you have technical/integration constraints or legacy constrains then its probably obvious, even to me. If you’re developing with a particular need for exceptional high performance or many layers of remoting for security, then perhaps? But if you have a choice and want to develop efficiently and effectively then are you better with a newer framework? Also, does team size and experience make a difference, i.e. statically typed languages with frameworks that really guide the developer, at the end of the day provide a less risky path throughout the life of your project.

Anyway, very hard for you to reply to such generic ramblings I’m sure … really I just need to post something here to get your attention so we can catch up when I’m in Wellington next week.

p.s. think you nailed it on the head in your earlier post about more guidance being needed on how various models and artefacts support each other. IT is a profession but I don’t think we actually help people learn what they need to to be confident in mapping a path for customers from the model of the business, their ideas and objectives to a model of a system that can be built, hopefully with a sense of the priorities and dependencies needed to makeup a sensible phasing.