[hibikir]

The fact that people that have used Java do not realize that EJB3 is pretty good, when it's pretty old! I switched to EJB3 in 2006, and I really couldn't see why people would choose Spring anything instead. The switch to Soap, and then to Rest, was changing a couple of annotations. Not bad for a 9 year old framework.

Now, my biggest problem with the stack, and the reason I do not use it anymore, is Java itself. A switch to Scala makes a lot of the Java boilerplate go away, and even Java 8 doesn't get close. Now, I find all the major Scala web libraries to be lacking, in one form or another. Play's second compilation feels clumsy. Spray's freedom of routing leads to very ugly code: Just look at their own large examples. So what I am currently doing is using a homebrew routing on top of Spray, which also gives me some documentation for free: Pretty useful when you have hundreds of services in hundreds of servers.

It's a pity that Java itself moves so slowly, and is so reluctant from adding key features, like pattern matching, because the rest of the tooling is pretty good.

[john-waterwood]

Yeah, EJB 3 is itself really not that new, but it took some time for implementations to come out. JBoss AS 5 took ages and EAP even longer. Then people had to upgrade from their older versions and then had to discover how much the new APIs had improved.

I don't have hard numbers, but judging from popular comments online I'm carefully guessing that it wasn't until ~2011 until people really started to see how simple EJB had become.

The old stigma still clings to it, much undeserved.

[needusername]

> I really couldn't see why people would choose Spring anything instead

Testing. Updates and fixes not tied to server releases (which can take years).

[john-waterwood]

Fixes don't take years with Java EE!!!

We're using JBoss and there's an updated version mostly every few weeks, months at most. Absolutely not years, that's totally ridiculous and tells me you've never really used Java EE.

[needusername]

JBoss still doesn't have a supported Java EE 7 server. JBoss releases still much less frequently than Spring. If you want to look at how quickly things are fixed in JBoss have a look at this: https://issues.jboss.org/browse/SECURITY-746

If you need a feature in Java EE you have to wait several years for the next Java EE release and several years more for the next server release that implements this, see JBoss.

[john-waterwood]

You're mixing up things.

JBoss releases updates to its implementation rather frequently. If you look at their release dates it's almost every other month. See ftp://ftp.redhat.com/redhat/jbeap/

You're quoting an individual bug that has been open for some time. Did you also looked at the many bugs that were fixed after a few hours after being reported? Do you dare to state that Spring has no bugs or that none of their bugs is open for more than a day, week, month?

Java EE has a spec cycle of about 2 to 3 years (there was an article about this recently, Google it if you want). That's the time between 2 spec releases. It's about the same time as between major supported JBoss releases, so between EAP 5, 6 and 7. There's 3 to 4 years between major Spring releases (Spring 2 2006, Spring 3 2009, Spring 4 2013).

And Java SE doesn't release a major new version montly, let alone yearly either. A spec should move fast enough to stay relevant, but slow enough to provide the stability needed so lots of other technology can build on it.

[needusername]

> JBoss releases updates to its implementation rather frequently. If you look at their release dates it's almost every other month. See ftp://ftp.redhat.com/redhat/jbeap/

http://jbossas.jboss.org/downloads

EAP 6.4: 8 months EAP 6.3: 8 months EAP 6.2: 7 months

> Do you dare to state that Spring has no bugs or that none of their bugs is open for more than a day, week, month?

In about 50% of the times I have reported bugs or submitted pull requests against Spring they were closed within 6 hours. Spring releases about a month apart. The other 50% lay dormant for years. Still way better than any contribution I tried to make so far to Java EE. 0% success in about 6 tries.

> Java EE has a spec cycle of about 2 to 3 years (there was an article about this recently, Google it if you want).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Platform,_Enterprise_Edit...

Java EE 8: at least 3 years Java EE 7: 4 years Java EE 6: 3 years Java EE 5: 3 years

[john-waterwood]

>EAP 6.4: 8 months EAP 6.3: 8 months EAP 6.2: 7 months

That's skipping a lot of updates. EAP 6.2.2: 1 month EAP 6.2.3: 2 months EAP 6.2.4 1 month EAP EAP 6.3.0: 1.5 months Etc

>The other 50% lay dormant for years

So this exactly the same as with a Java EE implementation or any other open source project for that matter. Many get fixed in hours, others weeks or months and some years or simply never. Spring is not inherently better here as their track record proves. That your personal reports were of no success maybe says more about yourself than of any Java EE implementation. I got many bugs fixed and have seen others reporting bugs that have been fixed in no time.

>Java EE 8: at least 3 years Java EE 7: 4 years Java EE 6: 3 years Java EE 5: 3 years

I was more referring to this one: http://arjan-tijms.omnifaces.org/2014/10/java-ee-process-cyc...

The actual time spend on the spec is less (see table). Whatever number you look at, it's not that different from the major Spring releases, and Spring is a product even, not a spec.