First of all, an answer as thorough, thoughtful and well-argued as this
goes a long way towards convincing me.
His response: "I think that's a very precise analysis. As long as
people are in denial of a world outside, Struts will seem like the
only way. And a rebel framework like RIFE stand as little chance as
Rails. But as soon as they open up, I think they want to distance as
much as possible (and thus Rails provide the exact opposite of the
Struts in a lot of ways)."
I can well understand this. I am on the rebound from a not wholly
successful project, based around Struts, Spring, Hibernate and various
other technologies, where everything ended up taking much longer than
anyone envisaged. In the end the company decided to ditch everything and
start afresh with Ruby On Rails. I decided not to follow down that path
but to stick with Java and part company (I didn't want to waste the
benefits of several years of Java experience). Since then I've been
assessing various Java based approaches.
Those who come from Java are usually tied to the frameworks they
already chose and thus very often can't switch to another view on the
problem nor another technology stack. If they choose to change, they
tend to go for the solutions that already have a large user-base (if
100000 people chose it, it can't be bad). Even if they don't get the
nicest solution, they at least get one that works well enough and has
a pool of knowledge that can be capitalized on. If they choose to
change radically, then the memory of the over-zealous complexity of
what they already used drives them as far away from Java as they can:
RoR.
There's probably another factor in there - employability. I am working
as a consultant at present, so am able to go with whatever technology
seems best for the client. But if I switched to contracting, then
Struts/Spring/Whatever skills are far more likely to land me juicy
contracts than RIFE skills, at least at present. (This is, of course, a
perpetual issue because what is best for one's client is so often NOT
the market leader, and often the best paid contract jobs are in areas
with complex technologies).
Some things have helped people lately:
* the URL drives a RIFE application: URL == state
* the templates don't drive the pages: they are logicless blueprints
When I begin with a new app, I start from the jumpstart and write a
simple version of my domain model first. I add RIFE/Crud to get an
instant admin interface to be able to easily populate the application
with data. Then, either I customize the Crud behavior or write some
custom elements. From there on, I extend iteratively and add tests to
ensure that the application continues to behaves as intended.
If it works for you, it's certainly a good approach for me to start out on!
John
--
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John Moore - Norwich, UK - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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