[ebiester]

I fantasize about rebuilding the java ecosystem. Create "JPM", don't allow anything from the old Maven system in it.

Create a new "hip" minimalist framework that ignores everything about java and its notions of OOP. Basic dependency management handled NPM-style. Developers encourage to put everything in the same package for their own stuff, and everything is package level. Getters and setters and encapsulation and java's poor implementation of OOP ignored.

Heck, fork Spark, split out the individual pieces as modules, and start there.

All "JPM" packages expected to be under 100 lines, a la NPM. Frameworks are discouraged. Take what you need a la carte.

I'd argue that java is a better back end language than javascript in and of itself, but that the community norms have led to the pain we see.

Have an extreme preference for 1.8 code (IE, the new java.time system) and away from anything bloated. Rethink for the common use cases, rather than trying to support everything under the sun. Spring still exists for that, after all. :)

The problem with java isn't that it's a BLUB language anymore, but that it's a BLUB ecosystem. I'm not saying the language is perfect, but Java 8 as good as ruby or javascript for web development if the ecosystem is ignored.

[radicalbyte]

You've basically described C#:

Getters, setters fixed? Check. Functional features? Check. Most crappy OO features fixed? Check. Trendy package system inspired by npm/apt-get/gems? Check. Healthy community with libraries replacing frameworks? Check.

I'd recommend checking it out if you haven't already.

[WildUtah]

"You've basically described C#"

Unfortunately the CLR doesn't run on any useful platforms.

[__david__]

Like Linux or Mac? http://www.mono-project.com/

[Crito]

The difference is that I can basically count on any arbitrary java/jvm program running on Linux, but even with Mono I don't get that same level of confidence with random c#/clr.

Now this may be largely a culture thing, with Java programmers creating more cross-platform software and avoiding platform dependent libs just by default, or it may be a technology thing, but to the end user it doesn't really matter.

[socialist_coder]

Sure, you can run command line c# apps just fine but the web hosting solutions for c# web apps are terrible compared to IIS + Windows.

And this is coming from a linux veteran who wrote a C# web app and hosted it in production on Linux for a few months and then had to re-write it in .NET MVC hosted on IIS. I hate Windows servers. Every time I have to RDP into them to change some configs instead of just vi'ing files in /etc I want to shoot myself.

[thomasz]

> Every time I have to RDP into them to change some configs instead of just vi'ing files in /etc I want to shoot myself.

Ugh, maybe you should try out at least one of the several options for remotely managing IIS before you shoot (or embarrass) yourself?

[socialist_coder]

You still have to dig through 20+ screens of possible configuration values, some configs are in web.config in your app, some are in some other machine.config files, etc. The configuration just seems like a mess compared to your standard linux app with everything nicely organized in /etc/<app>

Not to mention the difference of opinions you get when you search for IIS tuning info/documentation. Half the stuff is only valid for older versions of IIS and there doesn't seem to be a lot of good info on the latest version when it comes to tuning.

[nobleach]

I love the Mono project, and I follow its progress with great hope. But I've tried to use Mono apps on my Mac (Popcorn Hour configuration things) and they flat out wouldn't run. The gui came up and it just hit a brick wall. I tried it on my Linux laptop... it showed a bit more... and then got stuck. I ran upstairs to a windows machine. Finally it worked. So the write once, run anywhere mantra hasn't exactly hit all Mono developers yet. I think C# is one of the best languages I've ever been blessed to use, but Mono still has a ways to go.

[hk__2]

Yes. Mono is not C#, it’s only a subset.

[gfody]

Please at least learn what Mono is before spouting this tripe.

http://mono-project.com/What_is_Mono

(hint: search for the word "subset" on that page)

[_random_]

Mono is not a language. C# is not a platform. Get a clue - it's useful.

[mattgreenrocks]

The "libraries over frameworks" notion is something I keep noticing in communities that seem to be more engineering-minded than rock-star-ninja-dev-minded. Where do you think this comes from? I think it's a mix of maturity on the part of the community members along with how often the language is used to do things that are harder than CRUD.

[ebiester]

In my case, I'm speaking of a reaction to Spring and Struts. I personally use Grails on my recent projects, which is as close to batteries-included as it gets, but I occasionally have problems with square peg round hole problems, and fighting against a framework is more painful than a library.

The problem with the framework is that we run into a steep hill when we must diverge off the path. A good framework gives a great story. Unit tests, integration tests, consistent layers, convenient and powerful ways to access the database without writing a giant SQL generator (if x return "and b.id = c.id" else return "b.name = "%" + name + "%")...

But then, you hit the use case that the framework didn't consider. And suddenly, you either need to extend the framework (never pleasant) or go outside the framework for one portion, which means building all of the tools from the ground up.

Or, more often, ignore testing, hack in the best way you know how, and hope nothing breaks.

The library approach means that you have to build the integration pieces yourself. This is painful, but it means that when you reach a new use case, it isn't as large a jump to keep going.

Each has tradeoffs. There are times when each is superior. Someone like Bob Martin would suggest that you build your system independent of frameworks and treat the web as a client/compatibility layer, and that you build your system of small composable parts so that the framework/library question is a minor one. (This has its own tradeoff with an abhorrent amount of plumbing code that comes along.)

It all comes back to the problem at hand and how we judge the tradeoffs, like most engineering problems.

[mattgreenrocks]

Do you know of any shops that use Uncle Bob's approach (besides 8th Light, of course)? I don't; I wish I did. I agree that isn't something you'd use every time, but I feel there isn't a whole lot of data out there when people have used it. All I see online are devs whining about the extra work.

I don't know what it is about the web, but it's as if we decided all of software architecture didn't mean anything and threw it out. My theory: it's harder to feel coupling in a dynamic language, thus it's just an academic concern!

[ebiester]

I have plans to try it in a side project. I too am skeptical about the rewards of setting up a CRUD system like that.

It isn't that we've decided that software architecture meant nothing; rather, we settled on one architecture that is Good Enough. The View/Controller/Domain paradigm of Rails works for many projects.

[mattgreenrocks]

It won't be great for CRUD. It's really meant for applications that have a bunch of business logic to them...you know, the interesting apps.

Aside: "good enough" seems to summarize the web as a whole. This is both discouraging and a fact of life.

[Iftheshoefits]

I'd say it's exactly about "maturity" not in the emotional sense, but the "breadth and depth of professional experience" sense.

A lot of the 'glamour' in the Bay Area is around web apps that 20-somethings use. As a consequence a lot of the headlines and centers of discussion are going to be around languages, platforms and paradigms that reflect that. And, these days, that would be dynamically typed languages, frameworks or framework-like 'libraries' and fad-following (which is where the "rock-star-ninja" meme comes from). I just try to filter the noise as best I can to glean the useful and interesting bits of articles and comments I read.

[gngeal]

Except that of all the things you've named, dynamically typed languages are hardly "a fad". It's surprising (?), though, that the lousy ones are the most popular ones.

[Iftheshoefits]

I take a very cynical view of these things, and from that perspective it doesn't surprise me at all, really. My cynical view is that the "lousy" ones are popular because they are easy even for non-technical people to learn well enough to be useful in the majority of business settings.

This sets up a kind of feedback loop: there is an abundant supply of "cheap" labor who can use these languages, which companies love, and so they create more jobs for this labor market to fill, which means more people want to fill it (since there are jobs there).

Edit: 1) I would disagree that python is a "lousy" language; 2) To give some perspective regarding where I come from, the vast majority of my experience is with statically typed languages like C, C++ and Java; I prefer them and in my experience they are at least as easy to develop with as any of the dynamic languages that are popular.

[mattgreenrocks]

The commoditization of web devs will occur, it's just a matter of when. Consider it the collateral damage from ever-more-powerful frameworks, a de-emphasis on SOLID-type software architecture, and businesses wanting to pay less for developers.

[dragontamer]

I think its more of the realization that types are actually freaking useful for determining "provability" of a system. C++ perhaps takes it too far with Const, but it allows the compiler to prove that certain functions will not attempt to modify certain variables.

Compared to Python or Ruby, you're pretty much relying entirely on culture and good habits to ensure the proper rules of encapsulation. Any code may modify the private members of your objects. (Granted, C++ has "mutable", Java has the whole "Reflection" loophole as well. But you can search for those edge cases rather easily).

[sanderjd]

Alternate theory: "lousy" is a subjective measure, and those languages are popular because in many other peoples' subjective reality, they are not lousy. Just a theory though, by all means, keep thinking that languages are objectively ranked identically to your subjective ranking and anybody using ones at the bottom are just dumb dumbs who are incapable of using the ones at the top.

[agumonkey]

I first saw this in clojure, and thought it came for the builtin immutability of most types. Meaning you can't have order problems with libraries functions, unlike in the mutable world where a framework will shield you a bit.

[edwinnathaniel]

Your package system is inspired by Maven, minus a good build system and other functionalities.

Try building a large C# projects with running unit-tests, integration-tests, packaging, code-coverage, code style baked into it, and a bunch of other plugins for your build systems without pulling your hair.

Your DateTime library ain't there yet sir so you're pretty much at the same situation with Java (although both ecosystems have NODA/JODA lib).

C# is just Java with 10% syntax improvement and -30% to -40% productivity lost when it comes to everything else.

[barrkel]

C# is Java with perhaps 200% syntax improvement. The things I use most often with e.g. Ruby - monadic collection operations like map, select, etc. - is there in the form of Linq, with select, where, etc. A concise, type-inferred lambda expression goes a long, long way.

The .net ecosystem isn't as evolved as Java, for sure. But I don't think maven is a good implementation of a dependency management system either, nor is it particularly good as a build system.

[edwinnathaniel]

I still don't see any C# developers that are 200% more productive than Java developers due to limited infrastructure around the C# ecosystems.

Say anything about Maven but the recent discussion about embedding Bundler to Gem is just one step closer to be like Maven (now if they merged Rake+Gem+Bundler then Maven is). Even if Maven is not "good enough", .NET is thousand miles behind Java when it comes to dependency management and build system.

Google-Guava, as ugly as the syntax is, is good enough for most of us. Java 8 is around the corner so meh.

[mattmanser]

Huh? C#'s had Nuget quite a while ago now.

Why are Java developers always like 5 years behind on C# improvements?

And build systems are something g you set up one afternoon, why are you so fixated on a tiny part of the programming process?

[edwinnathaniel]

... And Nuget is always behind Maven.

... And C# devs always borrow patterns and best practices from the Java ecosystem, so I think it's you guys who are always 5 years behind us.

... If you're using MSBuild or Nant and can set up an adequate build system in one afternoon, either your project is super simple crud, or you're not using enough tools to ensure proper engineering/verification, or you're the top 5-10% people who can bent .net build tools according to your needs, or you're exaggerating.

If you think that we shouldn't sweat over build scripts then that seems to be a hint that you have not dealt with large projects.

[runT1ME]

>monadic collection operations like map, select, etc

There is nothing 'monadic' about select. SelectMany yes, but not Select. That's equivalent to map in other languages.

[tel]

Sure there is! Monads generate liftM, so if you live in a place so bereft of explicit semantics as to call major parts of your standard library "monadic" without specifying which monadic context to which you refer... Then you may as well drag functor and Applicative along with you.

The weakening of the concept is inevitable now that everyone has been taught to not be afraid of it even if they have no clue why it exists.

[olavgg]

Any language today that still requires to mark end of line with a semi colon, has in my opinion outdated syntax. Most people put one statement per line, so why is it required and not optional?

[katbyte]

just guessing but if all statements are terminated with a ; instead of a newline it allows statements to be split up into multiple lines?

[devdas]

What about the counter case of one statement needing more than one line?

[hhw]

1) Line length is arbitrary, and there is no finite limit 2) You can have an escape sequence for a new line

With that said, I disagree that having to mark the end of a statement with a semi-colon is obsolete syntax. Statements and lines should not have to be 1-to-1, even if most code is written as such.

[_random_]

And some languages don't check types for you before running the code and it's almost 2014 now, can you imagine?

[barrkel]

Ruby, Python, even PHP checks the types of values before executing operations on the values.

[keypusher]

That's not true, at least with Python. It uses duck typing, there is no type check before execution. It just runs the code you give it, if you try to call a method that doesn't exist (split on a integer), it will just give an error.

[rbanffy]

Exactly. They check the types. They don't burden the programmer with such tasks.

[_random_]

We build those kind of projects and our team is successful with C#. Perhaps we just know a thing or two about decoupling on all levels. С# comes from the world that brought us Reactive Extensions and TPL. If you call runtime generics, continuations, dynamic typing and value types 10% syntax improvement, then perhaps you should grab a book or two and catch up a bit?

[bad_user]

"Runtime generics" (they are called reified generics btw) is one of the things that keeps the CLR from being a multi-language VM like it was advertised, as at the bytecode level they are very hard to work around. That's one of the reasons for why dynamic languages on the CLR never took off and that's why F# has two generics systems in the same language. I'm much happier with the generics type system provided by Scala - it's more flexible, allows for more type safety (so there are far, far less instances in which one needs to do isInstanceOf checks), you also get reification by receiving TypeTags and Scala can also specialize the implementation for primitives if you want it. You get most of the benefits and more, without butchering the runtime. The easiness with which you can generate bytecode on the JVM has been one of the reason for why the JVM has been preferred by language designers.

Reactive Extensions are very nice. I'm experimenting with the Java port, RxJava. Actually I use RxScala, the Scala interface. However, for me they are of limited utility for my current usecase, because in comparison with Iteratees (a concept coming from Haskell, borrowed by Scala and championed in Play2), Rx Observables are very error prone to issues such as backpressure, whereas Iteratees are safe by design. So on one hand, Iteratees are better for handling streams, such as http requests/responses, handling big files and so on, while Rx Observables are better for publishing events to event listeners. I can see myself using Observables though. Erik Meijer is now contributing to RxJava btw.

The C# continuations are delimited continuations, or partial continuations. They are pretty cool, not arguing about it. But in Scala, the API for the standard Future, is much, much nicer than the API of Tasks in C#, therefore working with Futures directly is more comfortable. Plus, Scala's philosophy is to empower the developer to build on the same "magic" that the compiler uses, therefore instead of introducing LINQ or Async, Scala 2.10 introduced Macros. As a result, LINQ and Async are now possible as libraries. Here's DB LINQ (see the direct embedding tab): http://slick.typesafe.com/ ; and here's Async, which will be included in the standard library, but it's just a library based on macros: https://github.com/scala/async

On Value Types, there's nothing ground-breaking about it. On one hand they are great and it would have been cool to have value types on the JVM. There are proposals to include value types that people experiment with in OpenJDK. On the other hand, the JVM being more restrictive about managing memory, gave birth to the most advanced garbage collectors in mainstream usage. C#/CLR is great when a low overhead is required, such as on mobile devices, but in a server-side context no GC-enabled language can beat the JVM.

On syntax, it's true that Java is an abomination. However this gave birth to multiple languages that are flourishing and you can't say the same thing about .NET ... Scala, Clojure, JRuby, Jython, Groovy and Rhino are examples with flourishing communities and ecosystems. Similar efforts have been happening for the CLR, but they never made it or are moribund, except maybe F#.

I did want to use C# several times, as I view it as a mixed-bag language, as in a language with comfortable high-level features that also has some low-level stuff, which is pretty cool on top of resource constrained devices. And I definitely prefer C# over Java (thank God for Scala and Clojure). Unfortunately the platforms I build upon are mostly Unix and I prefer to build on top of open-source as I'm the kind of developer that likes being in control. And in spite of the best efforts of those people from Xamarin, or the recent moves from Microsoft to open-source some stuff, .NET doesn't really have an open-source community and it's very Windows/Microsoft oriented.

It's a pity because it could have been much more than it currently is. And maybe it will, as I'm seeing some encouraging signs, like Microsoft partnering with Xamarin.

We tend to treat languages like they are football teams. We really need to learn from each other and build on top of each other ideas. Cross-pollination is healthy. Conservatism is not. If we jumped between platforms more often, we wouldn't be separate communities.

[EdwardDiego]

> that's why F# has two generics systems in the same language.

For real? Do you have any reading I can do on this? It sounds... interesting

[kitsune_]

What? We do all those things and have hardly a problem. What ci / build server do you use?

[edwinnathaniel]

In the past, I had the misfortune to work with MSBuild to setup a fairly large .Net project. This was before NuGet exist. NuGet helped a bit these days but integrating FxCop, FxStyle, auto run NUnit, generate the docs, and running code coverage as part of the build is very painful and a manual process from downloading the proper assemblies up to setting up paths and results. Not to mention packaging the whole things up and possibly deploying to local IIS all through the build script.

Preparing dev workspace means to include csproj in your repo which may contain hardcoded paths. Is that portable across to Mono? In Java, all you need is a Maven pom.xml file and the code. Any modern IDE can read pom.xml file and prepare the project consistently cross platforms.

CI server is the easy part.

[gngeal]

And C# "fixes" the deficiencies by heaping features upon features. Already it looks like the MS version of Perl.

[yareally]

Scala with all of its symbolic notation would be more like Perl than C# is. Scala also can run on .net[1].

[1] http://www.scala-lang.org/old/node/10299

[saryant]

The Scala .NET backend is being deprecated in 2.11.

[yareally]

Hmm, that's too bad. I haven't found a use case myself for needing it on .net, but I can understand it's probably a pain for TypeSafe to maintain it for both the JVM and the CLR.

[hansjorg]

Except that between the two, only the JVM is truly cross platform, Mono notwithstanding.

[_random_]

Really? How can I use JVM on iOS? Is there a good toolchain for Java -> native iOS?

[bad_user]

Besides RoboVM [1], there are also other solutions, like Codename One [2] that's based on XMLVM [3], or Avian [4] which is a new and very promising lightweight VM that can also compile code to native. And there's also J2ObcC [5] a compiler that's being developed and used by Google to share code between Android and iOS.

You know, Java can be many things, but you can't beat its ecosystem ;-)

[1] http://www.robovm.org/

[2] http://www.codenameone.com/

[3] http://xmlvm.org/overview/

[4] http://oss.readytalk.com/avian/

[5] http://code.google.com/p/j2objc/

[rbanffy]

We were talking about servers. A Java program can run on just about every server platform out there, from puniest Windows Server machines all the way to IBM's largest mainframe and Cray's larger supercomputer.

[chii]

sure there is - RoboVM just came out recently.

In any case, JVM runs on more platforms than any others.

[ebiester]

Has the Mono story gotten better? How feasible is it to develop without thousands of dollars of Microsoft software these days?

[gfody]

Mono has gained serious traction the last few years. I've personally been using it along side .Net and am loving it. You could develop in Windows with the Free/Express versions of Visual Studio etc. and deploy binaries to Linux. You could also use monodevelop (http://monodevelop.com) in Linux or OSX. There are C# plugins for Eclipse and IntelliJ as well.

Relevant: http://www.mono-project.com/Companies_Using_Mono https://servicestack.net/features http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18450/is-mono-ready-for-p...

[bad_user]

> There are C# plugins for Eclipse and IntelliJ as well

No, there aren't. And MonoDevelop has gotten better, Xamarin is doing a good job, but it's still a far cry from IntelliJ IDEA. If you want to target Mono, spare yourself the effort and just use Visual Studio.

[gfody]

http://emonic.sourceforge.net/index.html

IntelliJ still seems to be a wishlist item. Surprised there is nothing considering how many other great C# tools JetBrains produce.

[socialist_coder]

For command line apps they're fine. For web apps you still need to host them on Windows + IIS since the Linux+Mono c# web hosting is awful.

[raverbashing]

It has been some time since I tried it

Basically, YMMV.

To develop, sure, it is feasible (I did this, but for a simple webservice), but it may be missing something essential to you.

[moomin]

I'm sorry, but NuGet is a package manager that makes most Maven haters want Maven back...

[mynames]

Could you expand on "crappy OO features"?

[lightblade]

I also like to know more about this C# package system you mentioned.

[Glide]

I would imagine he's talking about NuGet. Unless I've missed something dramatic in the past half year in the .net ecosystem.

[rdmckenzie]

You've also described Clojure...

[pron]

I think that much of your fantasy is already a reality. For example, look at how Dropwizard[1] assembled a best-of-breed collection of modern Java libraries into a small, yet very powerful, REST micro-framework.

So the bits and pieces are certainly there, and even the JCP does good work sometimes (JAX-RS) that becomes good standard APIs with many different implementations.

[1]: http://dropwizard.codahale.com/getting-started/

[nogridbag]

Ninja web framework [1] is also worth a look. It's similar to Dropwizard in that it's less of a framework and more like a well thought out archetype building upon the best Java libraries. Two main differences I see are Ninja uses Guice for DI whereas dropwizard is manual DI. Dropwizard uses JAX-RS while Ninja has its own Play 1 style routing system.

While I really like JAX-RS, the reference impl Jersey uses HK2 for dependency injection, which makes it odd to integrate into a Guice application (in fact Guice support is still lacking with Jersey 2.x).

[1]: http://www.ninjaframework.org

[ebiester]

Dropwizard is a bit heavy by Node standards. The health checks, in the NPM-style system, would be its own package. The configuration class would be its own package. Resources would be their own package. Liquibase or Freemarker wouldn't be built in, nor would JDBI.

I think of Dropwizard much like express for node, and most of the "cool kids" in the node community think that that's just too much for a single library.

I like Dropwizard, don't get me wrong, but it isn't quite a micro-framework by other standards.

[pron]

I'm sorry, I may have been misunderstood. I meant that Dropwizard exemplifies how you can pick and choose components, those atomic libraries, into a "framework" of your choosing. Dropwizard contains very little code. It's just an assembly of the parts you wished existed, and the proof that those parts already exist.

[ebiester]

That makes sense, then. Looking at the source code briefly, it looks very similar to what I mean, especially if the parts are able to be used individually.

[candl]

Dropwizard is pretty great, but one unfortunate aspect is that it's stuck with Jersey 1.x for JAX-RS and as a result is missing some nice features, like async responses, etc.

[pron]

I only used it as an example to the fact that modern Java libraries bear little resemblance to those of yesteryear.

I do, however, think that standard JSR APIs are still really nice to have, if they're good.

[zaphar]

Java has always been a good language if you ignored the ecosystem. The ecosystem is a large part of what defines a language though. You have to take care in how you define that ecosystem.

I sometimes wonder if Node.js is making mistakes in the opposite direction as Java with their ecosystem these days.

[gngeal]

Java has always been a good language if you ignored the ecosystem.

You mean "no unsigned types (even though the language is essentially machine-level when it comes to integers), no compact memory layouts for aggregate data, no useful function values without jumping through hoops etc." is an approach that leads to good languages?

[yareally]

I think he's alluding to the stuff that comes after the language is released, not the language design/architecture itself. Node is not a language, so his comment probably implies that he's referring to the design choices of build system, development cycle (of tools, libraries and frameworks), and things like dependency management.

That's not my opinion, but just what I understood his comment to be about (personally I prefer the npm approach any day over Maven).

[dustingetz]

A language IS its ecosystem. In 2013 java is a good platform.

[rbanffy]

I believe the ecosystem mentioned is the consistently over-engineered AbstractFactoryFactory mindset that permeates so much of the Java space.

[fat0wl]

Hear hear. When I read about JVM performance issues I usually immediately think "team of 20+ complacent corporate devs who don't care if this succeeds or not because they can get a new job insanely easily at a moment's notice".

The issue with these other frameworks/languages is that even when modern frameworks are used there are usually some Java backend services (or another "powerful-outside-of-the-web-also" language) if the app does anything substantially complex. A ton of the hip web tech is basically for building front-end and cobbling together relatively inefficient backends.

I was an RoR guy myself but moved to Java & I see the correct hipster tech here but just lacking unanimity. I bet if the RoR community decided "Clojure hell yea" or "Scala hell yea" and contributed lots of plug-ins to those ecosystems, they would generally have similar development times with a lot of performance gain for free. I'm thinking about trying Play framework on Heroku just to see what the monthly bills & New Relic readouts look like in comparison.

[cloverich]

Here's[1] a comparison of the two from an RoR guy who used Play! (with Scala) for 16 months. I found the ensuing discussion pretty informative with minimal FUD / bashing.

[1]: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/play-framework/pl...

[fat0wl]

Thanks but I've seen a lot of similar comparisons and they seem to focus on trivial things :/

For example the portion about "Asynchronicity" is a brief paraphrase like "Play is good in Rails its awful or doesn't exist". Performance isn't even mentioned really.

I find that with Rails apps a lot of development effort is put toward optimizing for scaling rather than complex logic, where Play could potentially be stronger. A lot of the comparisons seem to be posted by RoR devs who are looking at Play as a potential new framework for a CRUD app with a very fancy UI. In my mind that's not what it is... I read a few articles about corps using it for big distributed apps with a lot of eventing.

So I guess it's a bit of my personal taste but I just don't see "Rails has HAML", for example, as a reason why it's better given that HAML would be pretty trivial to implement in Play if the community wanted it. Full-featured CRUD frameworks vs. enterprise-ready app frameworks are very different ideals. They each have their place but if one tech were to emerge as really superior I think it could easily integrate all the bells & whistles that rapid CRUD devs like.

[porker]

> looking at Play as a potential new framework for a CRUD app with a very fancy UI.

Do you know of any frameworks that are good for that (but let you easily reach down for complex logic, e.g. where data processing or AI is needed)?

Every project I do needs some form of CRUD, and making it work AND be pleasing to interact with takes a lot of time. I don't mind the language, just someone, somewhere must have solved this already...

[fat0wl]

Hmmm I don't know. I think the conventional wisdom is to use a service-oriented architecture with the best front-end tools you can find.

The advantage of JVM in my opinion is that a lot of their toolchains have this approach in mind and simplify integration of the stack. Java can be used for a lot, when you add in other JVM languages that is a lot of possibility. Then again, if you design proper web services you can make almost any front/back-end interact, the trick is just in minimizing that amount of impedance.

[fat0wl]

(In fact, for heavy processing stuff I'm pretty sure it's architecturally preferred to have it on a separate machine than the web-app server)

[fat0wl]

also just so you know i think AI, for example, is beyond the scope of this web stack quest. When "complex" is used in a web app it means concurrency issues, asynchronicity, eventing. Not necessarily computational stuff beyond that

[runT1ME]

So why not scala? Scala 8 years ago is where java 8 is now, and you can ignore most of the java frameworks.

[pron]

Even putting aside my great dislike for Scala (which I discussed on HN ad nauseam :)), I think everyone would agree that Scala has a very different philosophy from Java. Java has been designed as a "blue-collar" language, with maintenance of a large project with possibly hundreds of developers as a central guiding principle. C#, Go, Dart, Kotlin, Fantom etc., have a similar philosophy. But Scala is a different beast altogether. You can love it or hate it, but even its most enthusiastic fans would concede that it is most certainly not appropriate as a replacement for Java in some/many/most (depending on your view) circumstances.

Also, Java is extremely popular, and some of its most painful points have been addressed in Java 8. Even an arguably better language (regardless of its name) will not easily replace Java. Hey, look across the browser at JavaScript. There are arguably better languages there; are they replacing JavaScript?

If you look just at GitHub – which is greatly skewed towards new languages – you see that all other JVM languages put together make about 10% of the JVM ecosystem, with Java being the 90%. Outside of GitHub, in "the real world", the situation is even more strongly in favor of Java. I don't know if this is going to change much in the next few years.

I don't mean that you shouldn't use an alternative JVM language if it makes your work better, and there are many viable and very useful alternate JVM languages – personally, I like Clojure and Kotlin – but you can't just "replace" Java so easily. I think efforts to reform the Java ecosystem are more likely to succeed – at least in the short term – than efforts that require switching to a different JVM language.

[fecak]

I wouldn't say that Java is extremely popular by any stretch. It's ubiquitous, but people aren't falling over themselves to become Java programmers anymore. I'd say Java is much less popular than it used to be (and I've run a Java Users' Group for 13 years). The JVM is still popular, but Java the language's popularity is arguably at a low point.

[res0nat0r]

I don't think he means java is popular in the "cool" sense. He means it is popular because it is so widely deployed and still in use everywhere.

[fecak]

I agree that Java is widely adopted (thus my 'ubiquitous' comment). The fact that the commenter followed-up immediately with "some of its most painful points have been addressed in Java 8" led me to believe it was referring to being liked and not necessarily to being adopted.

[pron]

I meant adoption, but mentioned that some of the issues that make it less well liked are being addressed.

I think it possible (though far from inevitable) that another JVM language will achieve dominance on the JVM, and it is very possible that Java will fall below the 60% or even 50% on the JVM (with the rest being taken by several, though not one dominant, languages). But this is still some years in the future.

[m0skit0]

Java at corporation level is extremely popular.

[eklavya]

On what do you base your assumption when you say nobody would recommend Scala as a replacement for Java? Scala has actually taken great pains to maintain seemless Java interop for this very reason.

It IS an improvement on/replacement for Java in most situations.

[pron]

That's not what I said. I said that no one would say that Scala can replace Java in all circumstances. Opinions vary greatly on what percentage the appropriate circumstances are (I think Scala is rarely a good replacement and never given the alternatives, while others, like you, say it's a good replacement in most circumstances - but not all).

In short, no one (who knows the software development landscape well, that is) can say Scala (or some other JVM languages) makes Java redundant.

[spaznode]

I strongly contest that assertion. I'd say an honest variation would be the dream of scala is an improvement.

Maybe when some of these new fancy tools like Graal become more polished and ready the dream that was scala can start to happen vs reality you get when using it. I'd be happy to see that happen.

[ebiester]

Implicits, SBT being anything but simple, and compile times. :) People have suggested sticking to a subset of Scala for most purposes, but what happens when you run into a problem with a library? Suddenly, you're diving into Slick (from a friend's example) or Play (from a personal, painful example) and can't make heads or tails of the code because of how different the paradigm is.

Frankly, I'd rather just go to Erlang and skip all the compromises needed to stay with the JVM if I want that kind of language.

[saryant]

What did you find painful about Play? I've dived into its internals a number of times, including to submit a performance fix a few months ago, and I've found it to be quite easy to understand.

[frowaway001]

What's wrong with implicits?

[Ygg2]

Magic.

[frowaway001]

... done right?

I mean the most hated implicits are implicit conversions and they basically exist for Java compatibility.¹

So on the one side you have terrible stuff hard-coded into the language (Java, C#) which you will never get rid of and on the other side you have a solution as a library which you just can de-import if you don't want to suffer from e. g. magic anything-to-String conversions any longer (I certainly won't).

That's a huge plus in my book.

¹ The two other main use cases, type classes and extension methods, seem to be hugely popular and I haven't seen any criticism concerning them.

[moomin]

I think you want Clojure and leiningen.

[astral303]

Groovy with Gradle is a pretty good answer that is there today. Gradle way way way easier to work with than with Maven for your build system, publishes packages with dependency info, so you still get your dependencies sorted OK. Groovy has automatic setters/getters, a ton of functional-style helpers (closures, etc), dynamic & static mixins, delegates, etc.

[usrusr]

Sorry, but in groovy, [[1 : 2]] - [["b" : "a"]] seems to be []. As long as they don't get fundamentals like this right i consider groovy only useful for demonstrating it's own deficiencies. The fact that this is in their Jira since 2010 and a fix would would be easy for anyone who understands the basics of hashcode and equals doesn't paint an all too rosy picture of the people behind groovy.

I'd rather work with a language that _i_ don't fully understand (modersky seems to provide me with an infinite supply of intellecutal challenges) than with a language that gives me reason to doubt that it is fully understood by the people who made it.

[vorg]

> a language that gives me reason to doubt that it is fully understood by the people who made it

It's really just one of the people who made it. Groovy has a non-technical project manager, and most of us who've programmed in corporate IT shops know how that goes.

A case in point: traits were announced for Groovy 2.2 ( http://groovy.329449.n5.nabble.com/Adding-Trait-to-Groovy-td... ) in June (2013). A rather lengthy discussion (55 messages) followed planning them, but the traits never came. The very last message asked what happened to them but the project manager never replied.

Another case: tech lead Jochen Theodorou began a discussion about changes to the meta-object protocol (MOP) for Groovy 3 ( http://groovy.329449.n5.nabble.com/Groovy-3-tt5710334.html ) in June last year (2012), kicking off a 91 message discussion. But the project manager canceled the new MOP, diverting Jochen into other work.

Again: Groovy creator James Strachan's very last Groovy mailing list posting ( http://groovy.329449.n5.nabble.com/Paris-write-up-tt395560.h... ) to that project manager who replaced him just before he left the Groovy development team in Dec 2005:

"The MOP and introspection APIs do NOT solve the horribly broken name resolution rules in the current RI of Groovy [...] I see no argument yet for why we have to throw away decades of language research and development with respect to name resolution across the language as a whole [...] It just feels totally wrong to break Closures across the entire language just because of some use cases for Markup."

The project manager's behavior is typical of non-technical people working in Software Development everywhere. E.g. on 29 August this year, Groovy's 10th birthday, someone added the project manager's name to Strachan's as a "co-developer" of Groovy on its Wikipedia page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Groovy_%28programm... ), giving him 3 titles (developer, project manager, and spec lead). I really had to undo it. Because the Spec was changed to dormant in April 2012 ( https://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=241 ) after being inactive for 8 years, I removed Laforge's "spec lead" title also. I also added the 3 technical people who are listed in Groovy's Codehaus repository as "despots" to give to Wikipedia page more truth ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groovy_(programming_language) ).

It's a pity how Groovy stagnated over the years, and maybe it's just a very public example of why "business people" shouldn't be allowed anywhere near programming language design and development.

[vorg]

> Groovy with Gradle is a pretty good answer that is there today

I've heard many good things about Gradle's functionality, but not so many about Groovy. Only yesterday ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6884355 ) I asked if Gradle will ever expose an API so developers can use the same language for the build scripts as they do for the projects they're building, i.e. Groovy with Gradle for Groovy projects, and Scala with Gradle for Scala projects?

[ebiester]

My day job is in grails. :) However, some shops still have an aversion to other JVM languages.

[al2o3cr]

"All "JPM" packages expected to be under 100 lines, a la NPM. Frameworks are discouraged. Take what you need a la carte."

LOL, I'm trying to imagine anything else in life being run like this. For instance, you go to the "car package manager" and are told that all parts must be less than 2kg and that you need to choose which ones you need...

[Periodic]

Except that there is implicit dependency management.

It would be like saying that all SKUs need to be comprised of other SKUs and less than 2kg of screws, nuts, bolts and custom components.

In your analogy the Spring might be an entire engine, spark plugs and all, built as a single unit. Want to use your own spark plugs? Tough luck. You get the whole engine or none at all, or you could just build your own from scratch.

[Falling3]

I think your analogy makes a whole lot more sense when you keep in mind that you'd be a automotive engineer and not a consumer.

[keypusher]

Have you looked at Groovy/Grails/Gradle? You can use the existing Java code and ecosystem or you can choose to do things the new way, you have access to a web framework similar to Rails, it's pretty nice.

[vorg]

> you have access to a web framework similar to Rails

Then why not just use Rails for Java, i.e. JRuby ?

[m0skit0]

Forget about OOP. Check Clojure.