Thank God Java EE Is Not Like Ajax

Slightlyright writes, "Java Developer's Journal reports that some people in the community are wishing that "Java EE would be more Ajax-like because 'EJB 3.0 can not save Java EE.' This has caused strong reactions from bloggers such as Rich Internet Application pioneer Coach Wei, who wrote: 'Which aspect of Ajax [do] we really want Java EE to be like? The difficulty in developing Ajax code? The difficulty in maintaining Ajax code? The extreme fragile nature of Ajax code? The extremely fragmented nature of Ajax support from different browsers?'"

Comments

The point being made is ...

[Elias Ross]

the JCP is too slow and crufty, comes up with homegrown technologies nobody wants to use, etc. and that tools such as Hibernate and Spring not borne from the community process are superior or, in the case of EJB 3.0, adopted.

I guess I don't know why "Ajax" was brought up, I haven't used it and it's not something I'm familiar with. Maybe Ajax doesn't belong in the same class of technologies. Arguing about the specifics means missing the point, though.

It often takes "rebel" technologies to move things forward. It also takes some experimentation to develop a technology; i.e. coming up with a rigorous, solid standard might prevent its spread. Sometimes sloppiness is good. RSS, HTML, etc. have done okay despite the sloppiness. Requiring every web page be HTML compliant would have stifled the web.

Recently, I've started working on Weblogic. I used to develop with JBoss. In terms of service deployment, JBoss is superior to Weblogic. I guess with Weblogic, you're still stuck writing a lot of code to deploy JMX services. I noticed at my new company that programmers ended up launching network servers from a Servlet, which was not its intended use. The ease of deploying MBeans and dependency control with JBoss is superior. It can be done easily with a bit of XML, and no code is required. JBoss also handles ordered deployments better. With Weblogic, deployment ordering is done by assigning a deployment order number (1-4000 or something) to your deployment. It reminds me of writing programs with line numbers back in the good old days of BASIC.

It's my guess that functionality from Spring will be eventually refined into a series of JCPs. Sometimes it's better that standards develop in this way.

Re:You mean the buzz?

[Savage-Rabbit]

I think you just hit the nail right on the head. CEOs and marketing types want the latest, "greatest", buzzword-compliant software. Old standbys are no longer will probably work just as well, maybe better, but they aren't cool. Actually, geeks aren't immune to this problem either. Being on the cutting edge is fun, and sometimes we forget that old, tried and proved techologies lasted so far for a reason. Being on the cutting edge is fun, and sometimes we forget that old, tried and proved techologies lasted so far for a reason.

<sarcasm>
So what you are saying is that after C, C++ and a number of other golden-oldie technologies have gone through the process, Java has now also become mature enough to be declared to be 'dying' by the buzzword junkies?
</sarcasm>

But on a more serious note this dude coachwei has a point, best practices is a concept that is pretty much non existent in a lot of places and that is not just true of AJAX. There are times I wish that more Java webapp developers knew why it is important to write thread safe code and what polymorphism and inheritance are useful for.