Ask HN: Why are there so few apps being built with JSP?

The biggest problem with Java webapp development, in my opinion, is its ridiculous obsession with XML. I can't count the number of hours I've wasted debugging obscure errors only to discover that I had a minor syntax error in my XML configuration files. In a framework like Rails, 90% of what I have to specify in those XML config files is assumed by default anyway, and almost all of the rest is done as Ruby code, which means I get actually intelligent errors when something is wrong.

Basically, it seems to me like Java web development uses XML as a dynamic programming language when they're trying to do something Java's not well-suited for. The issue is that XML has absolutely no type-checking at all, and so you end up with errors that make absolutely no sense when the only issues you have are simple typos.

The problem is even worse because you seem to end up having to specify the same information in so many different places, and having mistakes in just one of those will prevent anything from working.

I am sure there are ways around this, but the whole point is that if you're using a framework like Rails, you don't need to deal with any of this. It all just works, and having wasted months of time on Java web dev, I want to deal with a system that just works, not a system that requires ten or twenty kludgey three- and four-letter band-aids to get it to behave intelligently.

I am a Java developer in my day to day work but I'll give a few reasons:

1. The memory footprint of the JVM is significantly larger for a similar app vs. PHP. Also, it requires a lot of tricky JVM option tweaking to get it to work in anything less than about 512mb.

2. The build environment is really heavy weight and complicated. Maven seemed crazy at first though working with it for a while finally got me used to it. It's still crazy complicated compared to rails/python.

3. Lack of code reloading when you hit refresh. JavaRebel fixes this, for a price.

4. Java code is really verbose. You have to become an expert at a lot of IDE features before you can get decent productivity. You absolutely cannot use a simple text editor or anything less than one of the big 3 IDEs (Eclipse, Net Beans, Intellij) and get anywhere.

The future is bright though for the JVM. I have started to work more with Scala/Lift lately and I am really blown away at how fast and powerful it is compared to traditional Java development.

I dunno I find rdoc significantly better organized and easier to read.

Maybe it's the lack of a README concept that offers a high level intro to the library.

edit: maybe it's the font too. I have slogged through javadoc a few times when I've had to use java for something, but overall it's fairly high friction / annoying to learn an API via javadoc.

Do you like Tapestry?

disagree on the documentation point.