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My jaw dropped the first time I learned that JSF was translated (not sure compiled is the right word) into Servlets full of print statements. And of course no J

My jaw dropped the first time I learned that JSF was translated (not sure compiled is the right word) into Servlets full of print statements. And of course no JSF-based application has ever managed to produce valid well-formed HTML ever since.

bjarneh 6y ago
It should be noted that you are now referring to the sanest part of Java Server Faces, i.e. its first template system: Java Server Pages or JSP. If think JSP that compiles to a bunch of Servlets filled with print statements is bad, you really have to look at the rest of that stuff; because it gets a lot worse :-) The stateful design, which fills up templates with a bunch of hidden html-input fields, in order to open web-pages in the same "state" as you left them and all sorts of other crap. You also need to look into Portlets, which "splits" up a web-pages into seemingly stand-alone components. These are then combined into horribly complicated Servlets as you deploy, where http paramters are namespaced with some random _portletId=lsøjfksjo1920 things in order to figure out which parameters goes to which "part of the web-page". Again, all of this is so bad, you'd think it was a joke; but it was Java's offering for web-development, and a huge number of people CHOOSE that technology in the early 2000's.
- willtim 6y ago
  Oops, yes I mean't JSP not JSF. I almost want to learn more about JSF, out of morbid curiosity. I'm guessing one can't bookmark any pages and the back button is broken?
  - bjarneh 6y ago
    > out of morbid curiosity. I'm guessing one can't bookmark any pages and the back button is broken? Everything is broken :-) It really should be taught in schools as how not to design anything. I actually once worked on some extension (at least I think it was) of Java Server Faces which sent serialized Java objects as hidden html-input elements (base64-encoded binary blobs) back and forth with each request(!!). At least I hope that was not part of the core JSF technology. You really should run away from most of the early Java web-tech, it truly was horrid. It's also strange that a language, which was so "connected" to the early days of the web (even had their own html element <applet>) ended up with such strange things for web-development shortly after.

bjarneh 6y ago

It should be noted that you are now referring to the sanest part of Java Server Faces, i.e. its first template system: Java Server Pages or JSP. If think JSP that compiles to a bunch of Servlets filled with print statements is bad, you really have to look at the rest of that stuff; because it gets a lot worse :-) The stateful design, which fills up templates with a bunch of hidden html-input fields, in order to open web-pages in the same "state" as you left them and all sorts of other crap. You also need to look into Portlets, which "splits" up a web-pages into seemingly stand-alone components. These are then combined into horribly complicated Servlets as you deploy, where http paramters are namespaced with some random _portletId=lsøjfksjo1920 things in order to figure out which parameters goes to which "part of the web-page". Again, all of this is so bad, you'd think it was a joke; but it was Java's offering for web-development, and a huge number of people CHOOSE that technology in the early 2000's.

willtim 6y ago
Oops, yes I mean't JSP not JSF. I almost want to learn more about JSF, out of morbid curiosity. I'm guessing one can't bookmark any pages and the back button is broken?
- bjarneh 6y ago
  > out of morbid curiosity. I'm guessing one can't bookmark any pages and the back button is broken? Everything is broken :-) It really should be taught in schools as how not to design anything. I actually once worked on some extension (at least I think it was) of Java Server Faces which sent serialized Java objects as hidden html-input elements (base64-encoded binary blobs) back and forth with each request(!!). At least I hope that was not part of the core JSF technology. You really should run away from most of the early Java web-tech, it truly was horrid. It's also strange that a language, which was so "connected" to the early days of the web (even had their own html element <applet>) ended up with such strange things for web-development shortly after.