A really great comment someone made recently, was to point out through my thick skull that Java != j2ee. Of course I knew this, but at the same time it wasn't really part of my working thought. I've been lumping them together. Meanwhile, I'm finding that I am "resorting" to Java more and more for some things I just cannot do easily in LotusScript, and still want to run within the Domino server's purview.

In answer to the question: If 'better' can be applied to comparisons between vastly different tools, than I'd have to say, "Yes, Java is better than LotusScript." Why? Well, to begin with its a whole language. It has all the real object oriented 'stuff' you need for complex programming tasks. Aside from that, it has built in support for many of the more modern needs of a language. Interfaces to networking functions and such come to mind.

The long term problem with LotusScript, I must reluctantly admit, is that without a huge commitment of resources it cannot keep up with the growth and change in other languages. The example I give is Visual Basic. When LotusScript was released, it was very much in parity with Visual Basic. The two languages were nearly syntactically and functionally identical. Only the object model to which they were attached was different. That can hardly be said today, and the power of the objects models is so vastly different as to make the two languages nearly unrelated.

Of course, I'm not making the comparison here between Java and Visual Basic.net, as I think that's a much longer and harder debate since a great deal of vb's power comes from the visual studio itself and it can be hard to separate the langauge from the development environment and built in deployment model of Windows. A true comparison on that front would have to be a comparison of Java on J2EE, Visual Basic.net on the .Net framework, and LotusScript as part of a Domino/Notes environment. That's a subject I'm not going into today.

The major caveat is that Java as 'scripting' language is (at least in my opinion) a real pain the backside. Scripting, by which I mean using small portions of code to manipulate data or objects as part of an overall process, is still more easily done in a scripting language. Javascript, LotusScript, lotus Formula Languae, and to some extent Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications are still the easiest things to work with in that light.

The other major caveat is more personal -- I don't know Java well. That means everything I could do in 3 minutes with LotusScript takes an hour with Java. That's my problem, and I'm getting there little by little. My last Java agent only took 3 times as long, not 50.

I suppose that means NCT Search 3.0 will be based on a Java object, rather than a LotusScript one. Oh well.