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Some of the complaints about the over-formal language is a matter of taste, perhaps, but it does grate and is not a new complaint (see also: the Kingdom of Noun

Some of the complaints about the over-formal language is a matter of taste, perhaps, but it does grate and is not a new complaint (see also: the Kingdom of Nouns rant). However Java developers are learning (or migrating to Scala/Groovy/Clojure). And there is hope -- the Play framework, for example, is an example of Java done right (imho). Spring 4 is moving in the right direction.

nick_riviera 12y ago
I don't think it's a matter of taste. TBH I write very little of the code that is checked in to the source control. The IDE does all the boilerplate. I literally design the method signatures, define the access policy for the methods and fill in a few gaps here and there. Play is not Java done right by any means. It's tightly coupled, has really poor documentation, breaking changes galore between major releases, deployment is trouble (compared to tomcat) and rather tied to Scala's API. Java done right is picking some lego bricks that you stick together to get what you want and telling it how to wire them up. YYMV but 99.9% of all problems are already solved off the shelf.
- mike_hearn 12y ago
  Ninja Framework is rather nice, I've found. I looked around for Java web frameworks lately and it seemed to be the one that balanced good documentation, features, simple configuration and so on to my liking.
  - nick_riviera 12y ago
    Thanks - I will investigate this one.
- saryant 12y ago
  Deployment of Play is as simple as copying a JAR file onto a server and starting it.
- stefanve 12y ago
  I agree a bit with the Play framework comments. It has some interesting things borrowed from Rails but it borrowed to much of the magic for my tasted. I'm using Wicket right now. which is very nice and flexible and well documented. The source code is easy to understand it is not lasagna.
DCKing 12y ago
The Java variety of the Play Framework is indeed pretty decent. Last time I worked with it however, it had to some really hacky stuff to work around deficiencies in Java (7).
vorg 12y ago
> Java developers are learning (or migrating to Scala/Groovy/Clojure) Scala can be used instead of Java to build systems, though when a Java developer uses it for the first time to build a system, that system will need heavy refactoring to make use of Scala's functional facilities. Groovy's really intended for use with Java, not instead of it, such as gluing Java apps together, testing Java objects, scripting Grails, and 20-liners for Gradle builds. I don't know how much Clojure's used to build systems in industry, though it's certainly my language for scripting.

nick_riviera 12y ago

I don't think it's a matter of taste. TBH I write very little of the code that is checked in to the source control. The IDE does all the boilerplate. I literally design the method signatures, define the access policy for the methods and fill in a few gaps here and there. Play is not Java done right by any means. It's tightly coupled, has really poor documentation, breaking changes galore between major releases, deployment is trouble (compared to tomcat) and rather tied to Scala's API. Java done right is picking some lego bricks that you stick together to get what you want and telling it how to wire them up. YYMV but 99.9% of all problems are already solved off the shelf.

mike_hearn 12y ago
Ninja Framework is rather nice, I've found. I looked around for Java web frameworks lately and it seemed to be the one that balanced good documentation, features, simple configuration and so on to my liking.
- nick_riviera 12y ago
  Thanks - I will investigate this one.
saryant 12y ago
Deployment of Play is as simple as copying a JAR file onto a server and starting it.
stefanve 12y ago
I agree a bit with the Play framework comments. It has some interesting things borrowed from Rails but it borrowed to much of the magic for my tasted. I'm using Wicket right now. which is very nice and flexible and well documented. The source code is easy to understand it is not lasagna.

DCKing 12y ago

The Java variety of the Play Framework is indeed pretty decent. Last time I worked with it however, it had to some really hacky stuff to work around deficiencies in Java (7).

vorg 12y ago

> Java developers are learning (or migrating to Scala/Groovy/Clojure) Scala can be used instead of Java to build systems, though when a Java developer uses it for the first time to build a system, that system will need heavy refactoring to make use of Scala's functional facilities. Groovy's really intended for use with Java, not instead of it, such as gluing Java apps together, testing Java objects, scripting Grails, and 20-liners for Gradle builds. I don't know how much Clojure's used to build systems in industry, though it's certainly my language for scripting.