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For the past several months I've been giving my life to a cause that I now believe will fail miserably. I've decided to leave the NYSE. I wasn't being challenged technically, and management was simply not up to snuff. They actually asked me to, "just drink the kool-aid". I swear.

I haven't been writing, and I haven't even been coding much, all to work on this Death March project. Basically, its been terrible, and I feel like I went into a coma and I've just come out. I'm going to start writing again passionately.

I've accepted a new position where I'll be writing IPhone applications, Facebook apps with Rails, other web work with Rails, etc. I'm very excited about it. I get to learn two languages that I have little experience with (Ruby and Objective C). I get to work with a team that is much more in line with my way of thinking - adopting new technology, open-minded, agile, lots of tests, curious. It feels like a giant weight has been lifted off of my back. I'm very excited.

Additionally, I won't have to work in Java anymore. I'm convinced at this point that java is a dying language. I heard Neal Gafter left Google to work on languages at Microsoft.

I feel his situation parallels mine. He worked tirelessly on closures for Java 7, which he truly believed (as do many) were right for the language. But, the JCP is so damned conservative, that not only will his closures probably not make it into Java 7, but come on...will Java 7 ever actually come out?

I worked tirelessly for NYSE, trying to introduce new technology and exciting ideas. I tried to bring in Scala, and was shot down. I tried to bring in a test first attitude and stress that we really needed time to work on the testing framework there in general, only to be shot down at every suggestion. I felt the same as I imagine Neal felt, "This is impossible".

I believe NYSE ATS software projects will continue to fail until management is replaced.

This was a bit of a rant, but it was a long time coming.