Not to knock the wind out of Scala but most of his concerns have been answered in Java EE 6. But then of course Java EE 6 is a little bit new, so he might not k

Not to knock the wind out of Scala but most of his concerns have been answered in Java EE 6. But then of course Java EE 6 is a little bit new, so he might not know a bunch of stuffs earlier. Some of the example: regarding their Content API returning JSON/XML, this can be handled by JAX-RS easily. JAX-RS also provides more than JSON and XML (it provides ATOM-XML as well which probably more suitable for better RESTful services). Spring MVC (the latest version, 3.0) also moving toward Rails-like ActionController. Both Spring MVC Controller and JAX-RS POJO methods can be annotated to handle routing. As a results: way less XMLs. JAX-WS 2.0 (pure WebService) is also way easier to create, implement, deploy, and unit-test. JPA 2.0 probably requires way less XML than Hibernate. You can also use JPA 2.0 with GlassFish and wrap your service (a.k.a EJB 3.1 lite) with Transactional automagically with no extra XML file. Newer Java APIs/libraries are also exploiting fluent-API practices to make it more DSL-ish (as Martin Fowler decided to move to DSL after his OOP honeymoon, so do his followers). Don't get me wrong: Java is still verbose. But it's getting a lot way lighter and simpler for web-app development (enterprise or not). The biggest elephant in the room is the manager types and the old-school Java developers that have had tons of experience with Struts or older frameworks and wouldn't want to change their mindset.