Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#181

Post by vorg » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 10:25 PM UTC

twic wrote: post #173

kwhinnery wrote: post #94

My background, which informs my personal taste here: - Most recent 8 years, have used dynamic languages on the server (Node.js, Ruby, PHP, some Python) - Have dabbled in C# (ASP.NET MVC and WPF) - First 4 years professional experience as a Java web developer (servlets, Struts, Spring, Hibernate, etc) - Have needed recently to generate greenfield Java apps for relatively straightforward CRUD web apps / JSON APIs I per…

Why Maven rather than Gradle? Gradle has all the libraries in Maven Central. Gradle also has an extensive set of useful plugins built in [1], and many more available externally [2]. In particular, there's a plugin for making a fat jar [3], and even without a plugin, it's a few lines of code [4]. Or you can also make something more exotic like a capsule [5] or a shell script [6], or my preferred format, a 'distributio…

> Maven is obsolete. Just use Gradle. Until something better comes along.

Google released Bazel a few months ago, which runs on Linux, tho not Windows, and fully supports JVM-hosted software. It's better than Gradle, so why not move straight from Maven to Bazel? See http://bazel.io/docs/bazel-user-manual.html

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#182

Post by partisan » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 10:36 PM UTC

duaneb wrote: post #89

joostdevries wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. And I'd add that the continuous compilation of the Play framework allows for a great, fast workflow. Even in combination with non-JVM compilation like for Typescript. The last version comes with Slick integration which brings Ling-for-Sql style persistency to the JVM. In combination with support for Postgress JSON persistency that makes for a great fast prototyping stack.

I highly, highly recommend squeryl over slick. Much more readable as you're basically writing SQL in scala; you don't have to translate constantly between orm methods and SQL.

Agreed. Squeryl provides a really easy and intuitive API for querying and updating data. Slick seems to be less easy to use.

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#183

Post by vorg » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 10:46 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #84

sandGorgon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a comment posted yesterday criticizing the management of Groovy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10293508

Meh... vorg posts on nearly every thread that mentions Groovy and rants about all the perceived wrong-doings in the Groovy community. Some of his points have some merit, but he seems to tend to make mountains out of mole-hills.

You didn't comment on any of the specifics mentioned in that linked-to comment, instead you attacked my behavior, just like one replier to that comment.

You mentioned Groovy moving to the ASF in another comment above, but if only two people control the DNS name and physical access to that server in Germany hosting the websites, receiving the Nabble mail archive and Apache website redirects, creating the phantom downloads from Maven and Bintray, etc, then the list of committers and mentors at ASF for Groovy is meaningless. Because Groovy isn't really protected by the ASF guidelines, its future is uncertain.

As for Grails you also mentioned, Grails 3 also has an uncertain future, what with so few people upgrading from version 2, just like with Python version 3. Grails 3 bundles all of Gradle, and its business case seems less about modernizing Grails 2 than about its founder wanting to muscle in on the Gradle consulting market, just like he did with Spring in Grails 1, until SpringSource bought his company to protect their cashflow. He's trying the same with Gradleware.

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#184

Post by dcposch » Wed, Sep 30, 2015, 10:59 PM UTC

Many of these suggestions here sound really complicated.

At Addepar, we use plain Java. A REST API can be served with Jetty + Jersey. We have zero XML configuration of any kind. JOOQ for DB access. HikariCP for connection pooling.

Use Postgres, if possible.

Start with the data models and keep it simple. Favor composition over inheritance. The inheritance-heavy Java you see in old parts of the standard library and certain "Programming 101"-type courses is really bad, in my experience. Use Java 8. Modern Java can be v clean.

If you're starting a new project, use buck as the build system. At Addepar, we migrated from Gradle to buck, and our builds became less flaky and 2x-5x as fast. The build files are cleaner and more concise.

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#185

Post by slantedview » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 2:56 AM UTC

jacques_chester wrote: post #167

slantedview wrote: post #120

Probably playframework [1] or maybe Spark [2] if it's a really simple app, along with jOOQ for persistence [3]. If I was just writing a REST API, then Dropwizard [4]. The reason I would not choose Spring despite the fact that it is better now than it was 10 years ago is because it still approaches things with the wrong mindset, IMO. The reason JVM technologies are so loathed is because of the stupid, pointless comple…

How do you feel about Spring Boot? It's a very similar concept to Dropwizard: one project that does all the basics out of the box. Include JOOQ, if that's what you want.

Spring boot is fine, but it was basically created as an answer to Dropwizard, so why not just use the original thing?

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#186

Post by kristianp » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 4:31 AM UTC

andyl wrote: post #32

rails / jruby

How about Padrino / JRuby?

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#187

Post by neya » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 5:36 AM UTC

duaneb wrote: post #89

joostdevries wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. And I'd add that the continuous compilation of the Play framework allows for a great, fast workflow. Even in combination with non-JVM compilation like for Typescript. The last version comes with Slick integration which brings Ling-for-Sql style persistency to the JVM. In combination with support for Postgress JSON persistency that makes for a great fast prototyping stack.

I highly, highly recommend squeryl over slick. Much more readable as you're basically writing SQL in scala; you don't have to translate constantly between orm methods and SQL.

I second Squeryl over slick.Had a very nice experience.

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#188

Post by ww520 » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 6:33 AM UTC

balamaci wrote: post #116

carsongross wrote: post #70

SparkJava ( http://sparkjava.com/ ) + jooq ( http://www.jooq.org/ ) Minimalist and powerful enough. It's as close as you can get to sinatra + active record in the java world. And, of course, I would use intercooler.js for the front-end: http://intercoolerjs.org/ to keep things simple.

And to go even lighter I use pippo( https://github.com/decebals/pippo ). I like the modular way that allows me to tailor my apps to be <1MB final size. Really helps with lightning fast deployments on my many DigitalOcean smallest 512MB instances.It also works great on raspberry pies - I was using nodejs webapps until pippo because they were lighter on resources(I rather hate js and nodejs and hence the praise for pip…

Pippo looks pretty sweet. How does it compare to Spark?

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#189

Post by cryptos » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 6:34 AM UTC

dcposch wrote: post #184

Many of these suggestions here sound really complicated. At Addepar, we use plain Java. A REST API can be served with Jetty + Jersey. We have zero XML configuration of any kind. JOOQ for DB access. HikariCP for connection pooling. Use Postgres, if possible. Start with the data models and keep it simple. Favor composition over inheritance. The inheritance-heavy Java you see in old parts of the standard library and cer…

Composition is very comfortable with Kotlin. I think one of the reasons why inheritance is used so much in Java, is that composition always leads to a lot of boilerplate code. Kotlin (and Scala) fixes it.

Re: Ask HN: What stack would you use to build a CRUD web app on the JVM today?

#190

Post by cryptos » Thu, Oct 01, 2015, 6:39 AM UTC

playing_colours wrote: post #62

If that's only me or me and a few experienced Scala developers I would use more cutting edge stuff - Akka HTTP. If the team is less experienced or have more experience with traditional web apps - I would go with Play framework. It's well supported, not difficult to get into.

I find the Akka HTTP API pretty ugly.