Recently (using the COVID downtime)I started to look at Java EE (JSF, EJB, CDI, JPA, and so on) using the Java EE7 tutorial. I am so amazed by the drastic improvements to the technologycompared to the time I used to develop web applications with Java, JDBC, J2EE,and JSPs technologies before I retired in 2003 and pursued other ventures. TheJava EE is truly a mature technology today, making web-development a cinchwithout writing a litany of XML descriptors. The power of annotations, cdi, jsflibraries (i.e. core, facelets, html, etc.), managed beans, and the JPA trulyreduces the development overhead. The last app I developed before leaving thesoftware industry was a contact management application for the field financialbrokers, which took a team of 5 developers, 3 OO designers, 2 UX designers, and2 business analysts over 14 months from start to end. I was able to mimic thecore of that application using Java EE 8, on Glassfish with Eclipselink bymyself in 6 weeks without using a single line of Javascript for pagevalidations. The object/relational mapping and the power of EntityManger in thepersistence context reduced the overhead of the back end development by far.One of the euphorias of this exercise was the absence of Database connectionand a myriad of SQL statements in the code, and I can't rave enough about theJPA's bean validations injunction with the exception handling mechanism put inplace. Although I had very few “Select and update” statements in the code, forthe most part, I put the onus on the EntityManager to give me the data Ineeded. I am looking into other technologies offered by the EE at the moment(i.e. JSON, WebSocket, etc) and I use StackOverflow extensively to find answerswhen needed. However, an observation that caught my attention on StackOverflowis that the highest percentage of the activities (post and replies) on thetechnologies I mentioned earlier took place between 2009 to 2015, followed by adrastic drop onward, so I am not sure how to construe this sharp drop. Doesthis mean, the majority of the Java EE developers now have a matured skillsetand they do not need to ask those “how-to” questions anymore, not manyweb-applications being developed across the board, Java developers are shiftingto other development areas like AI, standalone apps on small devices, etc.—orthey are gradually migrated/migrating to other non-Java platforms (i.e.Python)? So, if I was a software developer looking to maintain a marketable skill set, I would heed this shift on the StackOverflow and try to get a goodunderstanding of it. Maybe it’s nothing or maybe it harbinger of an upcomingshift in the web-application area. I hope that Jakarta keeps the Java EE as aformidable contender against the newly emerging technologies in the comingyears. I started as a Fortran programmer using the punch card machines and sawmany programming languages debouch and supplanted by the new ones (Fortran, Pascal,Cobol, C, C++, etc.) but Java was different than those other ones, the wholeplatform gained momentum very early on and it seems that it is still the widelyused platform since the mid-’90s. Best wishes. On Wednesday, January 13, 2021, 10:55:23 AM GMT+3:30, nikita.zinov...@gmail.com <nikita.zinov...@gmail.com> wrote: Will, that is a really interesting read, thank you!
Speaking of modern JSF, I really enjoyed reading a 2018 book: "The Definitive Guide to JSF in Java EE 8: Building Web Applications with JavaServer Faces 1st ed. Edition" by Scholtz, Bauke, Tijms, Arjan Here's one of the links to it https://www.amazon.com/Definitive-Guide-JSF-Java-Applications/dp/1484233867 It covers modern enhancements and quite a bit of complicated history of JSF. --- In one of our projects we nicely used a combination of https://freemarker.apache.org/ as a templating engine and JAX-RS, but I didn't like the fact that freemarker does not support Expression Language (JSR 341, https://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=341), I think this fits into the action framework concept. But I also tend to think JSF 2.1+, especially 2.3+ is a good choice, although it takes some time to learn but there are nice textbooks on it! My 2 cents, Nikita On Tue, 12 Jan 2021 at 18:50, Will Hartung <willhart...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 12:31 AM Som Lima <somplastic...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> >> My concerns layed to rest with my direction set. >> >> I feel I must ask one more question from this knowledge pool. A bonus >> question if you please. >> >> It is my understanding struts is a competitor to spring but I don't believe >> It is part of EE. >> >> Where does struts1 + 2 fit into the Big picture you guys painted ? > > > Formally, Struts in any form has nothing to with JEE. It's only a competitor > to a portion of Spring. > > Struts 1 needs to die in a fire. It should remain only to be held up as an > example of things not to do, especially today. It's single claim to fame back > in the day was simply that it arrived first. Struts 1 is awful, IMHO. Modern > JSP and Servlets alone are far better, and there are much better frameworks. > Struts II is a vast improvement and related to Strut 1 in name only. I would > put them both aside, frankly. > > In JEE, you have JSP 2.x + Servlets and JSF. JSP 2.x is, IMHO, one of the > finest web application templating systems out there. JSP + Tag files + > Expresion Language is really powerful. If you want a templating language for > other things, JSP is a rough fit. But if you want one for web pages, it's > really remarkable. > > That said, modern JSF is really amazing. It's really powerful, but it > certainly comes with complexity. JSF is a true modular and component based > framework that scary powerful abstractions can be laid upon. Most people > don't take it there, but the underlying capability is there. If you were to > go with a more server side rendering system, JSF is very viable. > > There's been calls for a JEE standard MVC framework. Struts II was considered > an MVC framework. The term "Action Framework" is another term of art for it. > That effort stalled and derailed when Oracle dumped JEE on to the world. I > don't know the current status. Spring has an action/MVC framework as well. > JAX-RS with a little work is a pretty usable action framework. > > Today, most folks seem to trend to javascript heavy, single page apps with > JSON backend services. In that case, you don't need much of anything server > side. I can not speak to those, as that's not my area of expertise. As a > rule, I find most modern webapps to be not very good. There needs to be a > balance between the heavy pages and static pages with live controls. In that > realm, I think JSF is a better fit, but I have not worked on such an app in > some time. > > Regards, > > Will Hartung --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@netbeans.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@netbeans.apache.org For further information about the NetBeans mailing lists, visit: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Mailing+lists
