3 ms·

What is the virtue of developing a web application in Java instead of a scripting language like Jython (aside from execution speed obviously)?

henning 17y ago
Java IDEs are mature and make it easy to refactor your application. (I realize that part of the necessity of this stems from the Java language itself. The tools are still good.) This advantage may be temporary if IDEs for other languages become highly sophisticated.
ConceptDog 17y ago
Java itself is extremely mature on a well documented and expansive platform. Fusing the rapid development aspect of languages like ruby or php with the maturity of Java is pure win for web developers.
patio11 17y ago
Well, at my day job, not having to throw out 10 years worth of legacy code would be considered "a bit of a plus". We also have 1,200 employees and precisely two engineers who have ever done a Rails application more complicated than the 15-minute-blog demo. I think we have one guy who coded a Python app once. Our favorite contractors and outsourcing providers also have (comparatively speaking) deep skills in Java and the related stacks. Some of them have forgotten more than I ever want to know about, e.g., serializing Java beans.
- martincmartin 17y ago
  If you pick as JVM language as suggested, why would you need to throw out any code? When I worked at ITA Software which writes much of their stuff in Lisp (not the web stuff though), there was often worry that it meant new programmers would have to learn the language and so wouldn't be productive at first. But learning the code base takes a lot longer than learning the language, at least enough of the language to get significant stuff done. If you have 10 years worth of legacy code written by 12,000 employees, I assume you're in the same boat.
jriddycuz 17y ago
If you have developers that know Java and nothing else, which is not all that uncommon, it's really your only option. And since any developer who can't or won't learn additional languages is probably not very good, using a language like Java provides the fluff and bloat necessary to keep these untalented devs from screwing too many things up. Java's primary advantage in general is interchangeability of engineers. If you have developers that know other JVM languages, or who can learn, then I would say there is no advantage because any language on the JVM can refer to object built in any other. This is why things like Jython, JRuby, Rhino, and Clojure are cool.

henning 17y ago

Java IDEs are mature and make it easy to refactor your application. (I realize that part of the necessity of this stems from the Java language itself. The tools are still good.) This advantage may be temporary if IDEs for other languages become highly sophisticated.

ConceptDog 17y ago

Java itself is extremely mature on a well documented and expansive platform. Fusing the rapid development aspect of languages like ruby or php with the maturity of Java is pure win for web developers.

patio11 17y ago

Well, at my day job, not having to throw out 10 years worth of legacy code would be considered "a bit of a plus". We also have 1,200 employees and precisely two engineers who have ever done a Rails application more complicated than the 15-minute-blog demo. I think we have one guy who coded a Python app once. Our favorite contractors and outsourcing providers also have (comparatively speaking) deep skills in Java and the related stacks. Some of them have forgotten more than I ever want to know about, e.g., serializing Java beans.

martincmartin 17y ago
If you pick as JVM language as suggested, why would you need to throw out any code? When I worked at ITA Software which writes much of their stuff in Lisp (not the web stuff though), there was often worry that it meant new programmers would have to learn the language and so wouldn't be productive at first. But learning the code base takes a lot longer than learning the language, at least enough of the language to get significant stuff done. If you have 10 years worth of legacy code written by 12,000 employees, I assume you're in the same boat.

jriddycuz 17y ago

If you have developers that know Java and nothing else, which is not all that uncommon, it's really your only option. And since any developer who can't or won't learn additional languages is probably not very good, using a language like Java provides the fluff and bloat necessary to keep these untalented devs from screwing too many things up. Java's primary advantage in general is interchangeability of engineers. If you have developers that know other JVM languages, or who can learn, then I would say there is no advantage because any language on the JVM can refer to object built in any other. This is why things like Jython, JRuby, Rhino, and Clojure are cool.