I was thrilled to learn today that my friend Eitan Suez has released his JMatter application development framework as open-source software.

I’ve been a huge fan of the idea of Naked Objects since I first saw Richard Pawson talk about the idea at OOPSLA in 2000. (He called the idea “expressive systems” then, but only the name has changed.) I introduced the idea to Dave Thomas at OOPSLA the following year, and he began spreading the word through a series of talks at NFJS symposiums.

Unfortunately, programmers who became interested in Naked Objects as an application-development strategy frequently turned away from it again after becoming frustrated with the poor quality and design of the default naked objects application framework. Eitan, however, took a better approach: he decided to write a better framework. And he wrote it in the context of a real application he was developing for his employer, which is always the best way to drive framework design: validating ideas in the crucible of real-world constraints. The resulting framework is JMatter, and it’s a great tool. If you’ve ever wanted to explore Naked Objects as a way of building cool, powerful business applications quickly—or if you’ve already tried Naked Objects but decided it wasn’t ready yet—you owe it to yourself to give it a try.

(Disclaimer: my enthusiasm for JMatter has nothing to do with the fact that my visage is prominently featured in one of Eitan’s sample application screenshots. Quite to the contrary, in fact. :-)