Monday, June 10, 2013

My Technology Radar

ThoughtWorks published a recent version of their Technology Radar these days and Neil Ford did some explanation on it with the recommendation to "Build Your Own Technology Radar".

 I thought this is quite a good idea and so I wrote it down. Keep in mind that I am a Java backend developer so the topics that appear in this radar are affected by this.

The categories are similar to the once used by ThoughtWorks. The differentiation of Languages, Technology/Techniques and Frameworks/Tools seems reasonable to me. On the rating site I used  
  • Assess: have a look and try to understand what it is about
  • Trial : try it out
  • Adopt : use it if possible
  • Hold  : use it because it is well established (regularly put it to the test)
  • Leave : use better alternatives
The ratings (only) represent my personal usage of the listed items. It is not a general advice how to use them although I think that everything on the list (except the Leave ones) is worth to have a look at.


I think my radar figure is mostly self-explanatory so I will not describe it in detail. Most of the items are in the green Adopt and Hold section. I belief that Java EE and the related topics will become more popular so possibly the good alternatives that I use today will become less important.

 Looking at the data related technologies I guess that NoSQL will be helpfull to handle complex data that is difficult to process with relational technologies. I wonder if the Big Data topic will be relevant for me, therefore I will continue to monitor this trend. 

Java is my language of choice and I do not expect that this will change in the near future. Nevertheless the trend of dynamic languages is remarkable and beside JavaScript, that I use for web development, I most likely will have a look at Groovy. It integrates with Java classes and libraries and is used as DSL for Gradle which is also on my Assess list.

To increase code quality I use testing and static code analyzing tools and I appreciate their value.

 The cloud isn't a big think for me yet although I use cloud storage to backup my personal data. I can imagine that (private) cloud infrastructures will  become more meaningful (e.g. to set up test environments).

This is my current technology radar. I am exited about the changes if I repeat it next year. 
I am also interested in yours!

Links to the items that appear in the radar:
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