Do everything in Java…

H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Fri Dec 5 12:19:13 PST 2014


On Fri, Dec 05, 2014 at 07:52:24PM +0000, Russel Winder via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Fri, 2014-12-05 at 05:12 -0800, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 05, 2014 at 04:49:02AM +0200, ketmar via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> > > On Fri, 05 Dec 2014 02:39:49 +0000
> > > deadalnix via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
> > [...]
> > > > Also relevant:
> > > > http://wiki.jetbrains.net/intellij/Developing_and_running_a_Java_EE_Hello_World_application
> > > i didn't make it past the contents. too hard for silly me.
> > 
> > Whoa. Thanks for the link -- I was actually at some point
> > considering maybe to get into the Java field instead of being stuck
> > with C/C++ at work, but after reading that page, I was completely
> > dispelled of the notion. I think I would lose my sanity after 5
> > minutes of clicking through those endless submenus, typing out XML
> > by hand (argh), and writing 50 pages of Java legalese and setting up
> > 17 pieces of scaffolding just to get a Hello World program to run.
> > Whoa! I think I need therapy just skimming over that page. This is
> > sooo over-engineered it's not even funny. For all their flaws, C/C++
> > at least doesn't require that level of inanity...
> > 
> > But of course, if I could only write D at my job, that'd be a whole
> > lot different... :-P
> 
> Hopefully this all being stated in jest since anyone considering using
> JavaEE for a Hello World micro-service is either trying to introduce
> people to the JavaEE workflow for big applications or has a deep
> agenda, possibly involving Spring Boot or general hatred of Java.

It's not so much jest as hyperbole. :-)  While I'm sure J2EE (or
whatever the correct acronym is these days) has its uses, otherwise it
would quickly cease to exist, it violates the principle of easy things
being easy and hard things being possible. No doubt it makes hard things
possible, but easy things require an incommensurate amount of effort.
That, and the general tendency of Java platforms to require a whole
infrastructure of external configuration files and assorted
paraphrenelia makes me think twice about stepping in that direction.
Surely there are less tedious ways of accomplishing the same thing!


> As a counter example let us consider Ratpack where the complete Hello
> World micro-service (*) is coded as.
> 
> get("/") {
>     "Hello, World!"
> }

Yes, and *that* would be what I'd call "easy things are easy, and hard
things are possible". Well, I don't have direct evidence of the latter
half of the statement, but I'm giving the benefit of the doubt here. :-)

On a more serious note, the fact that these alternatives to heavy-weight
Java web application platforms are springing up suggests that perhaps my
evaluation of J2EE (or whatever it's properly called) may not be
completely off-base. No matter how much you try to alleviate the tedium
by having fancy IDEs auto-generate everything for you, there's something
about simplicity that attracts people. K.I.S.S., and all that. :-)


> (*) This term is now mandatory for fashion reasons.
[...]

This statement makes one suspect that perhaps there is some truth to
Nick Sabalausky's hyperbole about fashion designers posing as software
engineers.  ;-)


T

-- 
Once the bikeshed is up for painting, the rainbow won't suffice. -- Andrei Alexandrescu


More information about the Digitalmars-d mailing list