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Java and the JVM are actually very good. The real problem to me is the Java-enterprise way of thinking which usually involves Spring IoC container with too much

by rr808 1y ago

Java and the JVM are actually very good. The real problem to me is the Java-enterprise way of thinking which usually involves Spring IoC container with too much magic that makes it really difficult to understand. Get off Spring its a great platform.

brabel 1y ago
I've been a "mainly" Java programmer for 15+ years (I've used several other languages, but Java has remained the main one over all this time). I only did something like 1 year using Spring in one of my early jobs. So, when I saw some people online talking like "you ain't a Java programmer if you don't do Spring" I used to think they're complete idiots, I am living proof you can write lots and lots of Java and basically never encounter Spring. However, since then I've seen several surveys of JVM programmers, and apparently Spring is used in something like 80% of Java projects, so it's not surprising a majority of people, even Java developers, think that Spring is somehow mandatory if you're a Java programmer. But of course, it's just a framework, one of many, it's just the most popular one. Can you "do JS" professionally without knowing Javascript today? I'd think so. I guess React is about as dominant in the JS-world as Spring is in the Java-world.
- vips7L 1y ago
  On year 11 of writing Java professionally and I haven’t used Spring once. Spent a lot of time writing in Play and now more recently doing Helidon. However I do see the appeal, especially in low-talented teams. Spring brings a lot of free stuff with it and it’s easy to hire for.
dzonga 1y ago
i'm no spring fan. but if you gonna make something that will stand the test of time - then yeah spring. it provides you with an architecture to do things properly, way to do test through test containers, connect all kinds of databases in a familiar manner. try the inverse and you will cry razor blade tears.
- rr808 1y ago
  > it provides you with an architecture to do things properly This is what I disagree with. the Spring Object Container model is not a good framework to build on. When I have to maintain someone else's Spring project its a nightmare to figure out what does what.
  - gf000 1y ago
    It might be a nightmare to figure out, but guess what is more nightmare? Figuring out someone's shitty homegrown half of a "framework", with no documentation, full of bugs and vulnerabilities, etc. And that's the fair comparision in case of any sufficiently complicated business webapp.
    - rr808 1y ago
      I get that point about everyone rolling their own replacement. I'm not sure its different though as its common to try to hack Spring just to try to get it to work.
_ea1k 1y ago
I'm often shocked at how complicated Spring and Spring Boot are, but then I remember that they won against EJB 2.x. They are certainly less complex than a lot of the messes from that era.
- mdaniel 1y ago
  That's an apples and oranges comparison; EJB was designed as an alternative to CORBA[1], not the dependency injection and "convention over configuration" that Boot really leaned into I think that EJB was trying to get into the same resource utilization problem that Kubernetes is currently solving: "I have a shitload of generic boxes, please bin-pack compute onto them so I get a ton of throughput" but it turned out that no one's applications used that much compute versus the absolutely staggering amount of debugging and "onoz now I have a network hop in my call graph" woes 1: I know I'm cheating you a little because there were local EJBs, and also the ORM part of the specification remains to this day

by rr808 1y ago

brabel 1y ago

I've been a "mainly" Java programmer for 15+ years (I've used several other languages, but Java has remained the main one over all this time). I only did something like 1 year using Spring in one of my early jobs. So, when I saw some people online talking like "you ain't a Java programmer if you don't do Spring" I used to think they're complete idiots, I am living proof you can write lots and lots of Java and basically never encounter Spring. However, since then I've seen several surveys of JVM programmers, and apparently Spring is used in something like 80% of Java projects, so it's not surprising a majority of people, even Java developers, think that Spring is somehow mandatory if you're a Java programmer. But of course, it's just a framework, one of many, it's just the most popular one. Can you "do JS" professionally without knowing Javascript today? I'd think so. I guess React is about as dominant in the JS-world as Spring is in the Java-world.

vips7L 1y ago
On year 11 of writing Java professionally and I haven’t used Spring once. Spent a lot of time writing in Play and now more recently doing Helidon. However I do see the appeal, especially in low-talented teams. Spring brings a lot of free stuff with it and it’s easy to hire for.

dzonga 1y ago

i'm no spring fan. but if you gonna make something that will stand the test of time - then yeah spring. it provides you with an architecture to do things properly, way to do test through test containers, connect all kinds of databases in a familiar manner. try the inverse and you will cry razor blade tears.

rr808 1y ago
> it provides you with an architecture to do things properly This is what I disagree with. the Spring Object Container model is not a good framework to build on. When I have to maintain someone else's Spring project its a nightmare to figure out what does what.
- gf000 1y ago
  It might be a nightmare to figure out, but guess what is more nightmare? Figuring out someone's shitty homegrown half of a "framework", with no documentation, full of bugs and vulnerabilities, etc. And that's the fair comparision in case of any sufficiently complicated business webapp.
  - rr808 1y ago
    I get that point about everyone rolling their own replacement. I'm not sure its different though as its common to try to hack Spring just to try to get it to work.

_ea1k 1y ago

I'm often shocked at how complicated Spring and Spring Boot are, but then I remember that they won against EJB 2.x. They are certainly less complex than a lot of the messes from that era.

mdaniel 1y ago
That's an apples and oranges comparison; EJB was designed as an alternative to CORBA[1], not the dependency injection and "convention over configuration" that Boot really leaned into I think that EJB was trying to get into the same resource utilization problem that Kubernetes is currently solving: "I have a shitload of generic boxes, please bin-pack compute onto them so I get a ton of throughput" but it turned out that no one's applications used that much compute versus the absolutely staggering amount of debugging and "onoz now I have a network hop in my call graph" woes 1: I know I'm cheating you a little because there were local EJBs, and also the ORM part of the specification remains to this day