I have spent most of my web-development career in the Microsoft camp, but for different reasons I am trying to look at options.
Some years back I did a bit of Java/Struts development in eclipse, which was nice for its time but my memories of it are not close to what Visual Studio delivers today.
Some of the strengths of the MS stack as I see it are:
Ease of use. Free tools (express
editions), easy to set up, easy to deploy, loads of components and
support, even for cutting edge
features like ajax and jQuery.
Intellisense, so that the API
reference is there as you need it.
Size of the community. Things like www.asp.net,
with the free video tutorials,
samples, documentation etc. Free,
official and reliably updated
information from MSDN.
Enterprise scalable and decent
performance.
Fully object-oriented, (semi)compiled
languages, allowing for sound design,
patterns and practices.
There are of course weaknesses as well, like:
Pricing, once you go live with
anything semi-serious.
Vendor lock-in.
Total lack of cross-platform support.
I have spent some time this evening trying to get a grip on how things are outside of the microsoft world, and
I have found loads of PHP frameworks, Ruby on Rails and relatives, several Java frameworks and a few very odd alternatives.
Some of these seem very interesting, so I would like to hear from actual developers using the different frameworks, and try to find out how they compare to what MS has at the moment.
Which framework are you using, why is it great, what could be better and what kind of sites have you built using it?
Jeff & co made most of Stack Overflow in a few months using ASP.NET MVC. If you had to do the same using a non-MS framework and tools, what would you pick and why?
We have a pretty heavy investment in the Microsoft framework at the office and so I'm mostly doing ASP.NET MVC stuff now. If I were to pick an alternative at this point, I'd probably go with RubyOnRails. It has a very clean MVC implementation -- playing around with it made it pretty easy to get started with ASP.NET MVC when it came along. There's also a lot going on with improving testability -- particularly natural language-like testing frameworks coming out of the RoR camp with Cucumber, et. al. All the investment in testing makes TDD/BDD much more natural in that framework.
If I wanted to go opensource I would go with:
RAD web development: tomcat running Railo, a Java based open source CFML implementation because CFML is a good RAD tool. Railo performs well, is capable of clustering, is able to be extended through editing the source or adding your own extensions.
DB: MySQL for a DB backend because it performs well and just works.
IDE: - Eclipse + CFEclipse because that is what's available, although I want some improvements. Since CFML is a dynamic language you don't have Intellisense, just context help for the api.
OS: Any opensource unix based OS. Probably Ubuntu.
MVC Frameworks: Mach-II or Model-Glue because I'm familiar with them, although I'm open to checking out ColdBox.
I build web apps with:
PHP
Zend Framework
ExtJS toolkit
Aptana IDE
Disadvantages are the typical ones: lack of integration between the tools, weakness of debugging tools, complexity of deployment (although the deployment issue is true for pretty much anything except ASP when you're talking about windows servers).
I'm not too aware of ASP.NET, having only marginal experience with it, but the advantages as I would see them are cross-platform support, cheap hosting ability, architectural control (PHP is more low level, and Zend Framework is easy to buy into one module at a time, so you can more strictly control the behavior of each page).
I am using Django. It is easy to learn, very well documented and most of the brainy stuff happens in Python (assuming you like python). I develop all my HTML and CSS by hand using Aptana - gives better control but has nice helpful features.
Using many IDEs / editors you can get auto-complete based on the Django code-base (Netbeans, PyScripter, Komodo). You can then host on either Windows or Unix (Linux, Solaris, Mac).
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I am a .NET developer (and have been for a while now). I work for an organization that was just recently acquired by a larger company whose primary development language is Java. There are a few .NET developers, but the ratio of .NET to Java has decreased substantially now that the teams have merged.
That being said, I've decided it would be best for me to start Java development. However, most of the books I've seen so far for "learning Java" all take a very basic approach (what is a class, OOP principles, etc etc). I am comfortable with this part of development and don't need a primer (unless there are differences so profound that someone recommends the fundamentals from a Java perspective...).
Anyway, I'm looking for a book recommendation for Java development from a software developer's perspective that discusses today's techniques. For example, MVC architecture, application best practices (I am a web developer, this includes web services), is it worthwhile to work with JSPs or consider Ruby instead, etc etc.
A HUGE bonus would be "learning through doing". Something like Murachs, where I can step through a project from start to finish, and is light enough on fundamentals that I don't get bored. I'm hoping to walk away with enough basic knowledge to volunteer for some internal projects and grow from there.
I'm sorry if my question is needlessly broad, but I'm struggling to find a starting point aside from my Eclipse installation (I am doing this on Ubuntu, deliberately avoiding Windows).
Thanks for any direction or insight you can offer.
EDIT - After discussing with a co-worker, and reading Bert's great suggestion (all of them have been excellent, thank you all very much), it turns out the main focus is on EE, and Glassfish. They use NetBeans for development, since it is tightly bound to Glassfish.
This doesn't mean much to me, except that I think the parallel drawn is IIS/Web apps to Win32 apps. But perhaps it will help clarify some of the more open-ended questions in my OP.
Effective Java By Josh Bloch
It may not be "learning by doing" but it gets into the details of how to use the Java language effectively.
I would then complement it with Java Puzzlers by Josh Bloch and Neal Gafter
My best bet is to learn Spring based on your requirements:
MVC architecture, application best
practices (I am a web developer, this
includes web services), is it
worthwhile to work with JSPs or
consider Ruby instead, etc etc.
You can start by visiting SpringSource at http://www.springsource.org/
There are a few points I would like to make to you:
The basic Java language is rather small and C-ish. To my understanding C# and Java works almost identically here.
The Java runtime library is VERY, VERY BIG, and rather unlike C#. Very few people know all of the Java 6 runtime library well.
There are several IDE's in common use for Java. You will want to learn the one used by the rest of the team.
I would suggest having a brisk walk through the Oracle Java Tutorial, just to get the hang of the spirit and do some of the exercises, and then look at the common "Java for C# programmer" cheat sheets on the internet. Then do a lot of code, and then read Effective Java.
(For those who think they know Java 6 runtime well, please consider if you are familiar with RMI, the Rhino Javascript engine, and XPath in the XSLT implementation and all the rest)
Please look at the following thread:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75102/best-java-book-you-have-read-so-far
Ruby makes no sense unless you're writing JRuby on the JVM.
If you're writing web apps, you'll need to know JSPs written using JSTL (JSP standard tag library), servlets, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Download Tomcat from Apache - it's a servlet/JSP engine that will let you deploy web apps locally for learning. It has an HTTP listener built in, so you don't need IIS or Apache.
You'll need to know how to create and deploy a web archive (WAR) file. That's a ZIP file that contains the standard format for a web application.
I'd have a look at the Tomcat "first web app" docs to get a feel for it.
Once you have that, come back and talk about frameworks. (When you do, I'll recommend Spring.)
Here are some references I like. I'm sure there are better, but there are the ones I have read and can vouch for:
Java in a Nutshell is a classic summary of the core language. If you need more, there are books like Java for Programmers for programmers transitioning to Java (I have not read it).
Sun's Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages was a good book for Java servlets and JSPs. But consider that a lot of web tech is built on top of this (e.g. Spring), so this may be giving you foundation but not direct knowledge of the specific framework you will be using. Also a lot of web tech these days are client-side/JavaScript/AJAX-based, e.g. jQuery.
As for MVC, consider focusing on MVP instead. I been playing around with Google Web Toolkit to leverage my Java background to create client-side apps, but it is also a good way to get some idea of MVP - read Large scale application development and MVP Part I and Part II, and the GWT MVP Development with Activities and Places. However, GWT keeps evolving.
My last suggestion is that you narrow your focus - try to figure out what frameworks are popular at work and decide if you want to focus on a tier: front (e.g. HTML/CSS/jQuery), middle (e.g. Spring), or back-end (e.g. Hibernate). Once you figure this out, then post a more specific question(s) (e.g. what are the best resources for learning XYZ).
Just from my experiences with java (limited but I took a Web Dev course teaching JSP's) Any decent technology for it is usually 3rd party. However, from what I can tell when doing web dev I would use Netbeans, Netbeans has Tomcat built in especially in Ubuntu for easy debugging.
More on similar lines you can find answers from this post
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3820437/life-after-head-first-java/3820449#3820449
The Java landscape is quite wide as you probably have already figured out.
There are hundreds of frameworks and tools that can be used for basically doing the same thing. To get an idea, you can take a look at this presentation written by Matt Raible, where he compares a number of Java web frameworks.
As someone else suggested, you should definitively take a look at the Spring Framework. It is widely used in the enterprise world. There are several good books about Spring.
If you want to get the basics of Spring MVC in a "tutorialized" style, you can take a look at this book. It doesn't cover the latest Spring version (3.0) and it is not a "perfect" book, but it should allow you to get the basics while running some examples.
Also, there are literally thousand of Spring-MVC tutorials on the web.
For instance, you can take a look at:
http://www.adobocode.com/spring/a-spring-web-mvc-tutorial
RESTful services are also quite popular these days. I have been working with the Resteasy framework from JBoss and I found it very easy to setup and work with. This book explains the REST architecture and uses Resteasy as framework for the examples.
I also recommended "Head First Design Patterns" from O'Reilly. It covers the most important patterns using Java and it will help you to see how the language can be used for patterns you may be already familiar with.
One more suggestion: you may considering "tuning in" on Java TV. It's a great resource with hundreds of Java tutorial videos. It covers a wide spectrum of technologies so you should be able to find something for you.
I am wondering if anyone can shed some lights on the situation. I am about to start a project and trying to figure out what solution is best to go with asp.net or java jsp pages
I have personally worked alot with .net and am really happy with the framework and Visual studio as IDE I find it easy to work with and there is a massive community support behind .net, i can get alot done quickly
I have not every written anything use java jsp, there will be a learning curve here , so my experience is limited here. however after seeing jira i am very impressed with its capabilities, it has changed alot since the old days ( java 1.2 ) that i used to work with, and the fact that it runs under linux is a huge plus, so i am trying to decide is the learning curve, worth the price ?
so given the situation above what would you recommended?
Thanks,
Amir
JIRA is issue and bug tracking software; it can function with any development environment, so it has no bearing on your choice of development platform.
If this is an important project or has time or budget constraints, use the platform you are familiar with that works for you.
If you have the time and inclination to learn a new platform, there is certainly merit in that. More importantly though, who will maintain this when you are not around? Will it be deployed to an environment that is already .NET-centric?
Few apps are deployed in a vacuum (unless you work for NASA), so consider all of the peopleware issues as well as the technical ones.
If .Net is what you're used to and the only real advantage you care about in JSP is that it runs on Linux why not take a look at Mono?
http://www.mono-project.com/ASP.NET
Ya jira is in jsp and is a magnificent tool. But its not like you could not have developed something similar in ASP.NET.
Personally, i always go with a technology that i am confortable in. In a professional environment we have to deal with several other factors like time, teams knowledge in various technologies, deployment and maintainence.
you should concentrate on your core tech and do it in ASP.NET as you havent done anything in java before.
I have worked with Django before and have recently seen the Play framework.
Is this the Java community's answer to Django? Any experiences with it? Any performance comparisons with other Java web frameworks?
Edit:Almost similar to this question, the responses, unfortunately don't say much about the framework.
Play! is a breath of fresh air into Java and bypasses all the Enterprise cruft that has evolved over the years. Even the namespace is just play not com.playframework. It is supposed to be an answer to Rails, Django etc and is MVC based. It is needed for Java to stay relevant in all but deep entrenched enterprise shops.
Play! reduces the overabstraction and painful configuration of old Java. It is a complete stack it does not rely or play to the old Servlet/EJB methodology like Restlet tried to do (making REST easier in Servlets). Play! is a great REST based Java framework that is a valid contender to other platforms MVC frameworks.
It is very RESTful and it is easy to bind a parameter to a java method. They have also made JPA much easier to use through their play namespace.
play.db.jpa.Model
public void messages(int page) {
User connectedUser = User.find("byEmail", connected());
List<Message> messages = Message.find(
"user = ? and read = false order by date desc",
connectedUser
).from(page * 10).fetch(10);
render(connectedUser, messages);
}
Python is used for scripting instead of builds with Maven which might save a few lives.
I haven't been this excited about a Java framework since Red5 or Restlet. A bonus is they have easy ways to get your app up on Google AppEngine as well using the Java version of GAE.
I have been using Play! now for a few months and in fact have come to love the framework. I struggled with Rails and Django a bit, mostly because I am really not a fan of dynamically-typed languages; however, there was never a really good web development framework for Java to compete with these. In terms of productivity, Rails and Django were the leaders for the MVC arms race that was going on. Play! is awesome, it's concise, scalable, powerful, and it has a great community that is growing all the time. If you're still really into using a language like a Python or Ruby, you can use Play! with Scala too. I am really trying to get into Scala right now because I think it has a great future and it's a lot of fun to use. Anyway, I would recommend giving it a try!
The Play! framework is a really good piece of software, and that the JavaEE bloated environment should be inspired from.
I moved from Java -> Django because of the fast cycle "modify file" / "reload browser", and the Play! framework makes me came back to my favorite Java language.
It could also be compared in some terms to what Grails and in general dynamic languages in Java (Groovy is used in Play!) are trying to import: simplicity, speed and reliability.
I am also a Django user. I've just visited the Play framework and skim thorugh its documentation. It has the simplistic design Django has been known of. It even has app engine support built-in. I'm sure many java developers will support it, and it only need some time to see cool plugins from the community.
We recently started using Play for building a webservice for various mobile applications. I come from a Java environment. I can tell you that the learning curve isn't all that steep--literally in an hour I had the webservice running with basic API already. One week later we were on Amazon Web Services. I definitely see a future for Play as it simplifies web development for Java developers.
Couple of things that I noticed however (asset versioning, etc.) still are not built into the framework, but i'm sure they'll be there in time. I would say it is definitely worth a shot using Play.
I come from a very strong java background. So my answer here could be a little biased.
Play finally brings to the java community what django has been for all these years in the python community, but just a way better.
Play is built on the jvm therefore inheritance all the goodies from a solid platform that has been proving over the years to be the most reliable and scalable one that allows to write and run applications at scale.
I want to say that I did try django. Its popularity among the web community made me curios and I wanted to give it a try.
Strangely I did not find it as easy to use as I had expected.
So many configurations. Too may libraries doing the same thing and often not play very well with each other. A way too much magic.
Furthermore, not having type safety makes very hard to manage and maintain
web application at big scale.
Don't get me wrong, I am pretty sure that people managed to do it, but in my experience I still find java/scala best suited for this, especially when you share the code base with a lot of other developers.
IDE support for Java it is unbeatable. If you implement TDD you will find yourself refactoring code and moving things around on the daily basis. And java IDEs give you all this power. With type safety and more.
My take away is that as long as you find yourself writing a simple CRUD application/prototype/toy without even thinking too much of advanced features and big scale then you can probably find some advantages on using python/django. Otherwise the whole java ecosystem wins hands down. And play is the cherry on top.
Why Java is still used in web development? I'm just curious..
There are a number of reasons:
1. It is by no means a dead language. There are thousands of Java developers out there.
2. Many available Java developers means that it relatively easy to find maintenance programmers if necessary.
3. The Java / J2EE architecture is robust and reasonably elegant. It makes it possible to architect well built applications.
4. The free tools available for it are enterprise ready. For example, Apache / Tomcat / JBoss are a solid foundation to build a web-app from.
5. Excellent support for developers. Eclipse is one of the best developer platforms available. Ant and Maven support for Java is excellent.
6. There is a good availability of third-party (and open-source) libraries and Eclipse plug-ins for most of the additional functionality that might be needed but does not come in the core libraries.
7. There is also great support tools from commercial vendors: ORacle; IBM / Rational; etc.
8. Updated versions with newer language constructs are constantly being developed.
In short, it is a good tool for the job. It is compares favourably to other development platforms (.Net, Ruby, etc), and perhaps is better than some.
Simple. It's a cross platform environment, that is clearly defined, and controlled. Sure, Sun has a big deal of say in what is available in the Java environment, but there is plenty of 3rd party support and development in the Java environment.
Yes, Java applications start up slightly slower than Native applications, but take a look at VUZE... Once it's started, it's nearly native speed (or at least it was when I was using it). With the JIT (Just in Time) compilers, code caching, and other features, there isn't much of a reason that there would be a major speed penalty...
One big reason I think is because it's platform independent meaning they can easily run on all operating systems as long as you have the Java Runtime Environment installed. This could allow you to, for example, compile code in Windows and deploy on Unix.
I would also add that while this is only a con against .Net, your application server doesn't have to be Windows so it is cheaper to throw more hardware at it.
For the same reason as why COBOL and FORTRAN still exist. Because the language has proven itself to be robust and reliable.
Compare it with cars. Some people want the latest models because it has more power, better speed, improved features and whatever more. Others will just use a reliable car that's made to last for many years without much need for additional maintenance. Some buy a new car every 3 years, others will use their cars for half a century or more.
When talking about Java & the web, people seem to happily mix things by concentrating on Java applications deployed with Web Start (or even Applets), and forgetting that Java is a common language for implementing plain old dynamic web sites (or web applications). The latter is especially true for larger, more "enterprisey" systems. Even if on the desktop Java never really took off, on the server side it certainly did.
Without going into much detail, a couple of reasons why Java is used for creating web sites / applications:
It's a tried and true approach for building large-scale web apps. Either using just the basic (Java EE) technologies of Servlets and JSP, or newer frameworks built on top of those, such as JSF, Wicket or Google Web Toolkit. (Just one example of high scalability: Gmail is implemented in Java, using Google Web Toolkit.)
A mind-boggling amount of Java libraries exist, for all kinds of tasks — both open-source and commercial ones. If you need some in the backend of your app it may make a lot of sense to do the whole app using the same technology.
There are a lot of skilled Java developers out there — something that may affect tech desicions when launching (larger) projects
When creating a web interface for, or integrating into, an existing Java enterprise system (which are common) it may be beneficial to use the same language
Edit: I also agree with Doug about the tools and developer support. For example, IntelliJ IDEA may well be the most advanced IDE for any language (and I've heard this also from people who've used Eclipse and Visual Studio extensively... ;-) )
It's ubiquitous. The tools are great across the board. It's powerful. The community is huge. There is an amazing amount of available libraries / products / toolkits / frameworks. The JVM is great.
You can build cathedrals with this language. Those tend to stand for centuries.
Since Java doesn't run on the iPad, doesn't that hurt Java web development? Developing a web application that supports desktop and mobile is a possible path, but if your site uses Java or Flash, you have eliminated that opportunity.
We have a web application that is for both desktop and mobile (supports swiping, zooming, and such using jQuery). We decided against Java, Flash, and Silverlight because they do not work with iPad. The iPad is a growing base and web applications will have to keep up to support it.
It will be interesting to see how this affects web development with Java... time will tell.
I have a DVD cataloging application that I wrote a few years ago with MFC. Records are saved in a sqlite database, so basically it's a CRUD app. UI-wise, it has a tree view on the left, a list view (grid) on the top right, and an HTML view (embedded IE) on the bottom right. Nothing fancy.
I wanted to update the app with more features, but I've been using Java EE for the past couple of years and I realized that I wasn't productive at all with MFC. So I'm thinking maybe I should use something else to boost my productivity. Cross-platform would be a big bonus, but it's not absolutely required.
Here are the options based on my research:
Java / Swing: I can utilize my Java knowledge; great third party libraries (such as Spring for IoC and Hibernate for ORM); cross-platform. Downside is, JRE required for users; Swing seems to be in the "maintanence" mode and it's not getting much attention from Sun.
C++ / Qt: native application;
cross-platform. But I'm new to Qt so
I have to learn it first.
C# / WPF: WPF seems to be the future
of Windows GUI development and I'm
impressed by some WPF sample apps. I
have some experience with C# but I
need learn WPF. Downside is, Windows
only; .NET 3.5 runtime required.
So what would you use if you were in my situation? Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
If you want to learn some new skills while developing this application, then C# / WPF, and LINQ in C# 3.0 is really great if you didn't have it in Java.
If you just want to get on speed, then you already answer your own question, Java / Swing. It is what you are good at.
I'm actually a big C# fan, but since you said that cross-platform would be a huge bonus, I think that Qt might actually be better for that. C# can be cross-platform via Mono, but I've had better results with Qt in that respect. They also have real good documentation in QtAssistant to get you started.
Consider PyQt + Python as well if your productivity is a big issue. Trust me when I say the learning curve for Qt is well worth it, and not as hard as it may seem at first.
Sqlite support is in both the Python standard libraries and the QSql module in Qt if you prefer to use that.
PyQt + Python is a cross-platform option as well, since Python is available for many platforms and Qt's cross-platform to begin with.
The controls you mentioned you used in your application are all available in Qt.
The only other tool apart from raw C++ is Delphi. Period.
With other tools you will have problems in the deployment.
With Delphi you will produce native exes, self-contained. Also, the database connectivity is great.
You never will be dissapointed by lack of controls or 3d party tools, a lot with source code and with free/commercial toolset.
And the compiling times are the fastest in this galaxy ;)
So, if you are serious in provide no-hasle app for your customers, and that customers are not tech-oriented like developers so could be confused because which one of the 4 .NET runtimes install, want minimal support, easy downloads, click-click-install-go, apps that work instanly like Skype,TopStyle (made with Delphi) and others,then Delphi/C++ is are your only option. Seriously. The ONLY options.
If you want a cross-plataform solution, then FreePascal/Lazarus could work if your GUI is minimalist.
In most cases, as long as the scope of the project is reasonably small, and the computational needs are modest, I tend to favor using TCL/Tk. I have not yet learned a gui api in which I'm more productive than tk (not to say that there isn't one, just that I've tried several and found them slower). TCL is not the most wonderful language to program in, to be sure, although there are a number of add-ons that help a lot, specifically [incr tcl] and tcllib.
The reason I choose this instead of other systems, I prefer coding in python, for instance, is because deployment with tcl/tk is close to unbeatable. With Starkit, you end up with a single file double clickable application that requires no installer, and is trivially portable.
Well if you really want a class platform type of application, I would convert it into a web application and host it. That way if one user uploads dvd information or a dvd cover picture another user could take advantage of that information already input into the system.
If your going to develop for the desktop try to make feel like its an application made for that platform by utilizing the OS UI tools. And for windows, pick your 3rd option C# /WPF.
If you have some non UI code in your MFC app that you would like to reuse then consider QT. Otherwise pick whatever you prefer to learn.
Instead of C#/WPF you could give Silverlight a look. You app seems simple enough that it would not take a lot to get up and running. Similar to the demos that are shown off at conferences.
Once you get the basics down it will be fairly easy to add some cool features like animations, movie clips, album art, coverflow like interface etc.
You will be able to target Windows/Mac users and possibly Linux with Moonlight. But I haven't looked at Linux in the past 8 years so I really can't say much about it.
With Eclipse RCP, you get Java, cross-platform development (see Delta Pack), native look (via SWT) and a great framework collection for desktop development (declarative UI, plugin management etc.). You should definitely give that a try.
I went the C++/wxWidgets (but you could do Qt) route a few months back when presented with almost the exact same scenario (upgrade an app with a SQLite db). wxWidgets was fairly easy to pick up, had everything I needed, and was way easier than MFC. The best part was I found a good C++ wrapper for SQLite on CodeProject (e.g., CPPSQLite) and had the whole thing up an running in no time... The project sold me on wxWidgetss, in case you couldn't tell.
I would actually look very closely at something like adobe air. It is cross platform and can be html/javascript based so chances are you won't have a heck of a lot to learn except maybe a javascript library or two. It has the ability to talk to a local datastore or over the interweb to a webservice or RESTFUL service. Development is free with aptana. Check out some of the stuff written in it:
http://www.adobe.com/products/air/showcase/