HI Janne,
Thanks for your comments on books. I was hoping to avoid having to
read a book to write my first Struts app, which is basically a small web
app to let a user search a database table according to one of three sets
of search criteria. I thought this would be relatively simple. My
impression so far, however, is that Struts is way way way way more
complicated than I thought for this simple app. Perhaps I should just
write it without Struts and get a book to red and try Struts next time.
I thought EJBs were complex when I first learned them, but they have
NOTHING on Struts. Thanks again.
Ken
-----Original Message-----
From: Janne Mattila [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2004 11:19 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: Learning the basics
I did not notice any book recommendations in answers to your question,
and
frankly, I am not surprised. For learning a new technology I prefer a
good,
well-written and well-structured book to harvesting scattered web pages
to
critical pieces of information. Unfortunately, I have read three books
and
can not recommend any of those to you:
Mastering Jakarta Struts: elementary stuff, contains lots of errors,
does
not tell you how to implement non-trivial UI. Most is copy-paste from
the
apache.org documentation. Poorly structured content.
Jakarta-Struts Live: goes deeper into details and offers more advanced
stuff. Unfortunately author's way of words (no O'Reilly style
sophistication
here) and the book's (lack of) structure mean that it is an absolute
pain to
read! Also, you end up fiddling with lots and lots of "neat" plugins and
helper applications (StrutsTestCase etc) for days before you get
anywhere in
the actual topic.
Programming Jakarta Struts: Perhaps the best structure out of these
books.
Unfortunately also covers just the basics and contains lots of
copy-paste
from the apache documentation. It seems that the author could not think
of
enough to write on Struts, so he blabbers on things such as "unit
testing is
good" and "performance is important". What is it with the techincal
books
and their mammoth syndrome? Does every book have to contain all the
knowledge of the author? The examples are really irritating - incomplete
and
you wil not be able to follow them by writing your own application piece
by
piece, the only way is to get the sources from O'Reilly and compile them
all
since the code is so coupled. Also lot of the book concentrates on
author's
proprietary framework.
None of these was a catastrophe though, but all were a bit "so-so"....I
have
yet to find a _really good_ book.
>From: "Kenneth Litwak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Reply-To: "Struts Users Mailing List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: "Struts Users Mailing List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Learning the basics
>Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 11:22:33 -0700
>
> If I'm an experienced developer, but new to Struts, do I need to
buy
>a book to write a basic app, or is there an online tutorial or
something
>like that that is sufficient? One of the things I'd like to figure out
>is to how to have three radio buttons, and a regular button, and have a
>different action for each radio button. I can't figure out how to wire
>that. Thanks.
>
>
>Ken
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
_________________________________________________________________
Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
