RFC: Java/Systemtap examples

[jon.vanalten at redhat.com]

<SNIP>

> 
> The key is to present the ordinary Java programmer -- whatever one of
> those is -- with something cool that demonstrates instant useful
> results without requiring them to go away and study.
> 
> Andrew.

I have reworked the README with the comments so far in mind.  Thanks Mark, I borrowed your example!

I think though (and maybe I am wrong here), that where this will be most useful is not really the use case for "ordinary" Java programmers.  Which I am taking to mean the hordes of programmers who learn Java because it is easy and are writing relatively simple applications that do not truly tax any one part of the system they are running on and whose problems can be solved by any old debugger.  There are already tools that work well enough for this.  Where I currently see the greatest potential is in writing scripts that use not just the hotspot* provider probes, but also probes in the kernel, watching IO, CPU scheduling issues, and so forth, combining information from the JVM and the operating system.  The people who will find this most useful I think are those who know perhaps more than a little bit about the systems they are programming for, but are frustrated by lack of a single tool that can look both inside and outside the JVM; I don't think that these people will be so turned off by needing some background in order to effectively use a tool that can do just that.

That said, my revision (attached) does more to get an interested developer started doing cool things without having to look up other documentation, and points to more relevant (and less scary-kernel-tracey) stuff on the systemtap page.  :)

cheers,

jon
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