I've been very please with OS X as a Java development envioronment. I just completed my first Struts project built completely on Mac OS X. I used Struts, Castor JDO, Tomcat, Apache HTTPD, Xerces, Xalan, log4j, ant for cross-platform building. Project Builder was my IDE of choice - ant integration was trivial. I was the project lead and I did 100% of my development and testing on Mac OS X. We had a couple developers using JBuilder on Win2K. Our deployment target was Solaris and HP-UX. We used Oracle 9i running on Linux for the database. This is now in available in "developer preview" mode on OS X though I haven't tried it out yet. I've been doing some prototyping with JBoss and OpenLDAP also which seem to be working well so far.
Regarding WebObjects - it's very nice. I've done some prototyping with it. Unfortunately, it still costs money. It's definitely worth looking in the right environment. Obviously Apple's reputation in the enterprise space isn't great, so you have to overcome perception. It's a shame because the enterprise is where NeXT was really powerful. It's more expensive than the opensource stuff (Tomcat, JBoss, PHP, etc.), but the level of "spit and polish", integration and elegance is very high - much better than many more expensive app servers. EOF is second to none WRT O/R tools. I miss the Objective-C WebObjects but you've gotta have the Java name for serverside development if you're not Microsoft. The WYSIWYG tools are very productive and efficient and don't get in your way like some other GUI-based web development packages I've used. There is a learning curve, but if you understand OO, MVC and request/response, I don't think it's too much. I wouldn't expect more than a couple days to get comfortable with it. Getting the WebObjects basics down didn't take me as much time as learning the details of Struts, JBoss and Castor JDO. As for why I like OS X over Linux - it just works - no muss, no fuss. Don't get me wrong, I like Linux. I have two Linux machines in my basement that I use for my Internet server and gateways and development services - I've got them all configured, they work great and I rarely have to touch them. This is good because any time I have to touch them, it take hours to figure out what I need to do and get them stabilized again. I run them headless and manage them via XWindows from OS X. I use OS X for my primary OS at home and at work now because it just works and has a nice, first-class UI and great application support - serverside and desktop. It comes with Apache HTTPD, Python, Perl, PHP, Java 1.3.1, C, C++, Objective C, AppleScript, and much more. And the developer tools are very nice and extensible (albeit the auto-completion leaves a little to be desired) and FREE! The big reason I LOVE OS X is Objective-C and Cocoa. Dynamic binding rocks and the Cocoa frameworks allow you to be productive very quickly. I'd love to see some more Objective-C features in Java, like categories (a way to add functionality to existing classes without subclassing). I've written a tool that let's developers write client apps in Objective-C using Cocoa and access an EJB middletier. This allows Java-based serverside development and middletier reuse among web and client applications, while leveraging the sheer beauty of Objective-C and Cocoa for client application development. You can check out Apple's OS X (http://www.apple.com/macosx/) and Darwin (http://developer.apple.com/darwin/) sites for more details. BTW, Darwin is the open source, underlying UNIX implementation based on the Mach kernel and BSD 4.4 UNIX. I believe there is even a select set of Intel hardware that will run Darwin. Cheers! Matthew On Wednesday, September 11, 2002, at 11:24 AM, Eddie Bush wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >> I would agree, I am a recent OS X convert (Windows is absolute crap, >> w2k >> is digestable.. >> Linux was my OS of choice, until OS X) >> Now we just need JDK 1.4 !!!!! >> I am wondering why the Java Apple team, is so slow at getting a >> release >> out. >> > Wow. I can't claim any great experience with Apple in the past (other > than games). I know they're quite heavily used in publishing/graphic > design, and probably other things I'm unaware of ... but what makes > you say OS X is so much better than Linux? I'm very curious! > >> Oh yeah.. and Tomcat, JBoss, and STRUTS runs wonderfully on OS X >> >> mark >> > Regards, > > Eddie > > > > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > For additional commands, e-mail: > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
