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How come no one is making these things for Java? Do people just use Ant to do the same thing?

by RossDM 17y ago

mosburger 17y ago
No one makes any stuff like this for Java. Java has lost the wind from its sails. Java has been relegated to beige cubicles and enterprise solutions. I say this as a disheartened Java programmer. I've recently been involved in a Rails project and a couple of Django projects, and then jumped back into Java. The difference in energy is amazing. Who would make something like this for Java? What would its success path be? Acceptance into an Apache incubator and then into "Commons?" Spec JSR-123987 finally being accepted by Sun/Oracle five years after its written? I know this isn't a new revelation and I'm far from the first person to bemoan the stale, slow death of Java - but I'm sitting at an airport terminal with nothing better to do, and it's raining out, I'm depressed, and probably shouldn't be posting to HN. :)
- revetkn 17y ago
  Check out GWT's CssResource support, which is a much more powerful version of Less backed by a real compiler instead of a collection of regexes: http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/wiki/CssResource http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/wiki/CssResource I agree that most of the Java web bits (including pretty much all the popular web frameworks) are, for lack of a better term, enterprisey crap. It saddens me a bit that GWT isn't more popular - there's a lot of innovation and power there that gets ignored simply because the framework's written in Java. IMHO, Rails and Django et al are just kind of standard web MVC frameworks that happen to be implemented on fun-to-write languages: the only thing out there that has the real "right" approach to web _application_ dev is GWT, which is fundamentally difference from all the rest (per the Google Maps/Wave team, Wave would not have been possible without GWT).
  - mosburger 17y ago
    I've never tried GWT. I'll be sure to check it out, thanks for the recommendation. The most "fun" Java web development framework, IMHO, is Stripes. I think what sets it apart is the lack of enterprisey crap - it's simplicity is refreshing, but it's still powerful enough to be useful.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- zmimon 17y ago
  You're a little harsh. It sounds like you're looking back at the old places you left from java and guest what ... they're old ... everyone left, just like you did. In the meantime though the Java language has moved on and become the JVM platform and there's plenty of energy in it. Take a look at Grails, for an example. And there are new modern Java frameworks as well (someone else mentioned Stripes, and I agree with them).
fauigerzigerk 17y ago
I don't understand... isn't this a compiler that translates a CSSish syntax to proper CSS? What would it mean to make stuff like this "for Java"? You mean writing it in Java? It's true that Java has become utterly unfashionable. Unfortunately the popular replacements are very much limited by the fact that they are hundereds of times slower and force you into a multi process design in order to use multiple CPUs. I've been trying really hard to replace Java in some projects and it's been really difficult, so I guess Java has got to have some quality beyond fashion. If you look for libraries that are well maintained, do non-trivial stuff that you don't want to do yourself, are fast, reasonably complete and up-to-date on Unix and Windows, you will find that 98% of them are written in Java or C.

How come no one is making these things for Java? Do people just use Ant to do the same thing?

by RossDM 17y ago

How come no one is making these things for Java? Do people just use Ant to do the same thing?

No one makes any stuff like this for Java. Java has lost the wind from its sails. Java has been relegated to beige cubicles and enterprise solutions. I say this as a disheartened Java programmer. I've recently been involved in a Rails project and a couple of Django projects, and then jumped back into Java. The difference in energy is amazing. Who would make something like this for Java? What would its success path be? Acceptance into an Apache incubator and then into "Commons?" Spec JSR-123987 finally being accepted by Sun/Oracle five years after its written? I know this isn't a new revelation and I'm far from the first person to bemoan the stale, slow death of Java - but I'm sitting at an airport terminal with nothing better to do, and it's raining out, I'm depressed, and probably shouldn't be posting to HN. :)

revetkn 17y ago
Check out GWT's CssResource support, which is a much more powerful version of Less backed by a real compiler instead of a collection of regexes: http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/wiki/CssResource http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/wiki/CssResource I agree that most of the Java web bits (including pretty much all the popular web frameworks) are, for lack of a better term, enterprisey crap. It saddens me a bit that GWT isn't more popular - there's a lot of innovation and power there that gets ignored simply because the framework's written in Java. IMHO, Rails and Django et al are just kind of standard web MVC frameworks that happen to be implemented on fun-to-write languages: the only thing out there that has the real "right" approach to web _application_ dev is GWT, which is fundamentally difference from all the rest (per the Google Maps/Wave team, Wave would not have been possible without GWT).
- mosburger 17y ago
  I've never tried GWT. I'll be sure to check it out, thanks for the recommendation. The most "fun" Java web development framework, IMHO, is Stripes. I think what sets it apart is the lack of enterprisey crap - it's simplicity is refreshing, but it's still powerful enough to be useful.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
zmimon 17y ago
You're a little harsh. It sounds like you're looking back at the old places you left from java and guest what ... they're old ... everyone left, just like you did. In the meantime though the Java language has moved on and become the JVM platform and there's plenty of energy in it. Take a look at Grails, for an example. And there are new modern Java frameworks as well (someone else mentioned Stripes, and I agree with them).

fauigerzigerk 17y ago

I don't understand... isn't this a compiler that translates a CSSish syntax to proper CSS? What would it mean to make stuff like this "for Java"? You mean writing it in Java? It's true that Java has become utterly unfashionable. Unfortunately the popular replacements are very much limited by the fact that they are hundereds of times slower and force you into a multi process design in order to use multiple CPUs. I've been trying really hard to replace Java in some projects and it's been really difficult, so I guess Java has got to have some quality beyond fashion. If you look for libraries that are well maintained, do non-trivial stuff that you don't want to do yourself, are fast, reasonably complete and up-to-date on Unix and Windows, you will find that 98% of them are written in Java or C.