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Rant YC! Sacrificing a CPU to the Sun Microsystem gods...

5 points by iamelgringo 19y ago

So, I thought I'd inaugurate RANT YC! Allow me to start by blowing off a little steam about my techno-angst, and hopefully get a little "I feelz ya, Dawg" from my fellow hacker/founder peeps. <RANT>I'm taking a survey of Web development technologies class. And, we're in the middle of our final project: Set up and configure a Java development environment based on J2EE and J2SE on a Windows system, Set up and configure a 3 tier system using Apache+Tomcat and Oracle Modify a JSP, Servelet and an applet that connect to an existing Oracle database and do some simple querying and updating of a table. So, all in all, I spent a good two days just trying to get the setup correct, and that's with step by step setup instructions. I went so far as to do a clean install of Server 2003, install the appropriate JDK's for J2EE and J2SE, configured Eclipse, and then set up Tomcat and Oracle. It was a freakin nightmare. Hours upon hours spent getting the Classpath configured correctly for both J2EE and J2SE (they install to different folders, one to c:\Program Files\J2SE... and C:\Sun\.) Or, wanting to put my foot through my monitor in frustration, because I'm trying get a servelet to simply run on my server. I spent hours trying to decipher opaque error messages in Java only to find out that my version of Tomcat didn't work with my particular JRE. So, I had to compile my servelets with a -target 1.5 flag, otherwise, they would crash. Sigh... I'm doing this on Windows for crying out loud. Why do I have to sacrifice a virgin CPU to the Sun Microsystems gods and do incantations over my OS just to get a friggin development environment right? Hasn't Sun heard of an installer? Isnt' that what they are supposed to do for you? Configure things? Why do I have to go in to my environment variables and set up my classpath by hand? Why doesn't the installer do that for me? And, why do I have to manually configure two separate .java.policy files and make sure that they are the same, before I can run a friggin database applet on my dev box? I went through similar things to update my JRE for Firefox on an Ubuntu box last year. Hours on hours of downloading, extracting to folders, only to find out that Firefox and Sun don't like each other on Ubuntu much. I was never able to get it to work. Why, oh why is Java so popular? I don't get it. I thought that Enterprise was about making money. All this time spent installing and twiddling with Java on a dev box and on a server is just money down the toilet as far as I'm concerned. I'm planning on founding my startup next summer when I'm done with school. And, while I've rather enjoyed this class, one of the biggest things it's taught me is this: Stay away from Java. It's black death for a startup. And, can I just say that the next time I see anyone on the development crew for either Django or Rails, I'm going to give them a big ole hug.</RANT>

sadiq 19y ago
Mmm, my experience may be a little different to yours but the package manager in Ubuntu/Debian made things trivially easy for my setups. An apt-get of JRE, SDK and Tomcat coupled with a small detour via the web to get the MySQL JDBC connector, took about two minutes in total. What required you to manually update your JRE on the Ubuntu box?
- iamelgringo 19y ago
  I'm sure it's better now. This was a year ago or maybe two. My classes are all online, and they require more recent JRE's to be installed for their Java based online classroom environment to work.
andyn 19y ago
I've more than once found myself in this sort of "recursive version hell". All you can do is learn from it. > All this time spent installing and twiddling with Java on a dev box and on a server is just money down the toilet as far as I'm concerned. Unless you're being paid by the hour to set it up ;-) > Firefox and Sun don't like each other on Ubuntu much. This should be better now - if you search the ubuntu forums or one of the associated ubuntu wikis there should be an install guide somewhere, as sadiq says, it should just be a matter of installing a couple of packages.
- iamelgringo 19y ago
  | Unless you're being paid by the hour to set it up ;-) Agreed. I'm trying to think like a business owner, however. As a contractor... that's a different story. | This should be better now... It is. I eventually found a script that automated the whole process for me.
Tichy 19y ago
The big mistake you made is to install J2EE. Just install JDK and Tomcat, and you will be fine. J2EE is weird indeed - it used to be OK, you could download just the things you need, but I guess some Sun managers decided to make it bloatware and abuse their users, so now it is some indescribable blob. I don't even know exactly what it is - just don't install it, don't use, I can only repeat that! You need some J2EE libraries, like the servlet API, but I think you can use the one that comes with Tomcat. Also, I think there is some weird bug in the latest Tomcat versions, so the recommended version at the moment appears to be 5.5.17 (I am still using Java 1.5, though, and not yet Tomcat 6). I have never heard of the java.policy files - you chose the wrong path and I would recommend you backtrack and relax. It actually is very easy... As a sidenote, I found it very hard to set up Rails, too. The automatic thing didn't work (presumably user rights issue), I wasn't sure if I needed a db driver and went looking for one, and so on. I only successfully installed it once I switched my computer to Linux.

5 points by iamelgringo 19y ago

sadiq 19y ago

Mmm, my experience may be a little different to yours but the package manager in Ubuntu/Debian made things trivially easy for my setups. An apt-get of JRE, SDK and Tomcat coupled with a small detour via the web to get the MySQL JDBC connector, took about two minutes in total. What required you to manually update your JRE on the Ubuntu box?

iamelgringo 19y ago
I'm sure it's better now. This was a year ago or maybe two. My classes are all online, and they require more recent JRE's to be installed for their Java based online classroom environment to work.

andyn 19y ago

I've more than once found myself in this sort of "recursive version hell". All you can do is learn from it. > All this time spent installing and twiddling with Java on a dev box and on a server is just money down the toilet as far as I'm concerned. Unless you're being paid by the hour to set it up ;-) > Firefox and Sun don't like each other on Ubuntu much. This should be better now - if you search the ubuntu forums or one of the associated ubuntu wikis there should be an install guide somewhere, as sadiq says, it should just be a matter of installing a couple of packages.

iamelgringo 19y ago
| Unless you're being paid by the hour to set it up ;-) Agreed. I'm trying to think like a business owner, however. As a contractor... that's a different story. | This should be better now... It is. I eventually found a script that automated the whole process for me.

Tichy 19y ago

The big mistake you made is to install J2EE. Just install JDK and Tomcat, and you will be fine. J2EE is weird indeed - it used to be OK, you could download just the things you need, but I guess some Sun managers decided to make it bloatware and abuse their users, so now it is some indescribable blob. I don't even know exactly what it is - just don't install it, don't use, I can only repeat that! You need some J2EE libraries, like the servlet API, but I think you can use the one that comes with Tomcat. Also, I think there is some weird bug in the latest Tomcat versions, so the recommended version at the moment appears to be 5.5.17 (I am still using Java 1.5, though, and not yet Tomcat 6). I have never heard of the java.policy files - you chose the wrong path and I would recommend you backtrack and relax. It actually is very easy... As a sidenote, I found it very hard to set up Rails, too. The automatic thing didn't work (presumably user rights issue), I wasn't sure if I needed a db driver and went looking for one, and so on. I only successfully installed it once I switched my computer to Linux.