No doubt. I've built/run ATG sites for about nine years now and they're the only company with worse pricing models, worse sales policies, and less honest CEOs than Oracle. I'm actually hoping the acquisition brings some sanity to their licensing.
As for Dynamo itself, consulting on broken ATG projects bought my house and car, paid for my wedding and law school, and has guaranteed I'll always be able to find work or a billable engagement.
And I have to say, business practices and fiduciary self-interest aside, I'd rather use Nucleus than Spring/Struts/Hibernate/etc. with their sloppy configuration and implementation mechanisms.
I've been working with ATG technologies since 2000, it has been a fun ride so far and I agree with you that Nucleus and DAS are much better and much more cohesive that what passes for J2EE technologies today.
Unfortunately I also witnessed Oracle buy Orion, one of the best J2EE application servers of the time, and turn into their own typical slow and bloated mess. The culture clash with Sun is today's story, I'm actually afraid that ATG products will also become something I dread. Good things I started looking for alternatives sometime ago.
As for Dynamo itself, consulting on broken ATG projects bought my house and car, paid for my wedding and law school, and has guaranteed I'll always be able to find work or a billable engagement.
And I have to say, business practices and fiduciary self-interest aside, I'd rather use Nucleus than Spring/Struts/Hibernate/etc. with their sloppy configuration and implementation mechanisms.
Don't get me started on how much I miss DAS...