I want to introduce the idea of programming in Flux using POJOs (plain old Java objects). In a Flux release later this year, you'll be able to instantiate Flux objects as POJOs in addition to the traditional factory approach that Flux has employed since its inception.

The historical perspective is simple. Back in 2000 when Flux 1.0 was released, J2EE was the most important enterprise Java technology, and J2EE architectures used factories extensively. That concept influenced Flux 1.0. For that reason, Flux uses the factory design pattern to instantiate objects.

Today, the POJO programming model is the modern way. After all, it's simpler. It also makes it easier to integrate with other frameworks, most notably Spring, but Spring is certainly not the only framework that Flux could plug into easier if Flux supported a POJO programming model.

So, what will the new Flux APIs look like? Picture lines of code like this:

new FlowChart();
new TimerTrigger();
FlowChart.add(timerTrigger);
new Configuration();
new Engine(configuration);

I'm working on this task now and will report back once something more substantial is in place. Comments? Questions?