Jonathan:
I hope that you can forgive my bizzarly de-paragraphed text in the
last email. Thunderbird seems to have mangled the email formatting on
that last one.
I guess the real issue at hand centers around which programming
language and framework is the best for creating a webapp. And the
truth of the matter is that it depends on the application that you are
creating. Just about every programming language is really good at
something and others are good at other things.
You wouldn't use a swiss army knife to open a can of beans if you had
an electric can opener handy would you?
Nor would you write a script of shell commands in Java - you'd use
your favorite shell or Perl for that.
But the point that I would like to make is that Java is more of a
viable web programming language now that it ever has been before.
Lots of good people are working hard to make the Java and its many
frameworks simpler and easier to use while also adding functionality
to them.
I happen to like the JSF frame work a lot. At my company, we have
several applications that perform very different functions for us and
for our customers and the best way to tie everything together happily
is with Java. We've used several languages and several frameworks in
the past. I have a few developers working for me and I've seen a HUGE
productivity increases from them since we switched from Struts to
JSF. However, I would not use JSF or Struts to write a very simple
webapp. I'd probably use PHP, Python, or Ruby on Rails for that.
Jonathan Ellis wrote:
On Thu, 11 Aug 2005 09:51:27 -0600, "Erich Pletsch" [1]<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
said:
What's your idea of simple?
This is about all I could make out in your bizzarly de-paragraphed
text. But I think it's your main point, so I'll run with it.
"My idea of simple" boils down to the unix philosophy of "small is
beautiful."
Some elaboration:
* Don't repeat yourself
- if you can't introspect my database at runtime you
are wasting my time; this is 2005
- almost anything involving XML in the J2EE world fails this, not just
ORM
Database introspection is great and you're right J2EE doesn't address
that very well. You have to do JDBC calls to do that type of
introspection. But, non introspected database access is faster in
Java than introspected access. And, for most large applications you
don't really need to introspect the database. Hibernate has great
tools for database introspection when you're programming.
* Code that does one thing shouldn't be spread across multiple files
- e.g., JSP custom tags -- minimum 2 files to add a tag IIANM
That depends. Your example of custom tags is a good case and point.
If you want a standard way of describing and validating tag libraries
(which is what the tld does) then in does make sense to split them
into 2 files.
* "My IDE handles it" is not a substitute for good design
- because eventually you WILL run into a bug that requires
understanding what is going on under the covers
- the ide itself is a learning curve
You are absolutely right. And, as I mentioned before, anyone who
embarks on JSF should understand the back end.
However, the point of an IDE is to make life easier on the
programmer. So, if it creates the monotonous code for you (i.e.
getters and setters in java beans, and backing beans for JSF apps)
then all it's doing is speeding up the process of development for
you. You still have to understand what a backing bean is and what it
does for any of that to be of any value, but you don't have to write
the same code over and over again.
* the easy case should be easy
- related: common cases should be easy
- does avoiding the word "simple" help here?
- easy: one line of code. two tops.
To illustrate this last, consider calling a method on an object
by reflection. Assume that "instance" is your object reference,
and "method" is a variable containing the method name.
Python--
instance.getattr(method)(5, 'six')
Java--
import java.lang.reflect.*;
// ...
// Object instance, String method
Class c = instance.getClass();
Method m = c.getMethod(method, new Class[] {Integer, String});
m.invoke(instance, new Object[] {new Integer(5), "six"});
I'll grant you that reflection in Java is not as simple as reflection
in Python. That's one thing that Python is great at. However, I
wouldn't use Python just because it's simpler to code reflection in.
Back to the flames:
So far you've bashed Java and the J2EE
architecture as overly complex, but I haven't seen you suggest a
viable, enterprise class alternative.
I've already suggested Spyce, but I think that was in response to
the original poster back when this was actually on topic so you may
have missed it.
I did. Sorry about that.
If we avoid the trap of equating "enterprise class" with J2EE, then
yes, Spyce is enterprise-class. I'm sure I could design a site to
serve a million db-backed pages per day from a single server (http +
db) in Spyce, because I've already built one in another interpreted
language (TCL) that is somewhat more feeble (and marginally slower)
than Python. Is that enterprise-class enough?
(For comparison purposes, slashdot serves about 3M/day, but they have
multiple servers IIANVM. My site was also very update-intensive,
unusually so for web applications; it's quite possible I could serve 3M
or more from the existing server if the database load were more
typical.)
Rails would also qualify as "simple" in my book. I just happen to like
Python more than Ruby.
-Jonathan
I guess my definition of enterprise class is that it has a robust
feature set and can scale very well. Want more detail - I go along
with Bryan Sant's definition.
Honestly, I don't know how Spyce compares here. I don't have anything
positive or negative to say about Spyce because I'm completely
ignorant of its strengths and weaknesses. However, I know my
developers like Python, so it's probably great for a lot of things.
.-----------------------------------.
| This has been a P.L.U.G. mailing. |
| Don't Fear the Penguin. |
| IRC: #utah at irc.freenode.net |
`-----------------------------------'
References
1. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
.-----------------------------------.
| This has been a P.L.U.G. mailing. |
| Don't Fear the Penguin. |
| IRC: #utah at irc.freenode.net |
`-----------------------------------'
