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Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

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Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#131

Post by rbrcurtis »

andrewmccall wrote: post #67
davidchua wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious as to why you would call Java easier to deploy than Rails. Having developed both Java EE applications and Rails applications, Rails to me was much more easier to deploy, without having to deal with installing Tomcat and going through the extensive server configurations.

Java for most startups won't be Java EE. My best experience with Java recently has been with Jetty as an application server. It's fast and it's lightweight. I usually run Jetty behind nginx and don't generally need to configure Jetty to do anything. The whole Tomcat and connectors for apache configuration from a few years ago is well and truly behind me.

I think one major difference/hurdle of java web development and deployment is the fact that you HAVE to setup something like nginx in front of the app server or else you're working on port 8080 for everything. Or you have to know how to configure the app server for port 80 directly and mitigate the security concerns of doing so. By comparison, apache defaults to port 80, no tricks required.

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#132

Post by jbooth »

dorkitude wrote: post #25
noname123 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you mean by freelancers. There's an impression that RoR is the language of choice for hackers because so many web-apps are built by it. Web consulting firms use Java all the time because it's a proven technology with tons of flexibility. In RoR, the moment you step outside of the conventional MVC model; you are pretty much hosed, you have to write from scratch a lot of stuff that folks in Java have al…

Java tools are often for-enterprise, and the best of them are often for-purchase. Tweaking a Java library is huge PITA, because Java is soooo code-heavy. I estimate Java leads to ~10x as many lines of code when compared to Ruby or Python for basic libraries like API clients. The IDE-reliance inherent in that culture removes many of the immediate incentives of code minimalism, and as such, you often find insanely conv…

I take it you never heard of a little thing called the Apache Software Foundation?

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#133

Post by apgwoz »

gmosx wrote: post #58

I used Java until 2002, then used Ruby until 2009, then switched to Javascript (server side). 3 months ago I decided to switch back to Java and I really feel I lost a decade with experiments. It turns out, I am really a static-typing ...type after all. With utilities like Spring Roo, frameworks like Jersey (JAX-RS), IDEs like Eclipse and platforms like GAE, Java can be really productive.

It turns out, I am really a static-typing ...type after all.

Have you tried Scala?

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#135

Post by DanielRibeiro »

pwim wrote: post #90
patio11 wrote: post #61

I sold a Java-based program for about four years and have a previous background in Big Freaking Enterprise Java Web Development. You can certainly write web applications in Java. They're harder to deploy than PHP but easier to deploy than Rails, in my experience, depending heavily on how experienced you are at administering systems and how much Java enterprise coffee you want to drink. Java is a mature language. Libr…

They're harder to deploy than PHP but easier to deploy than Rails, in my experience, depending heavily on how experienced you are at administering systems and how much Java enterprise coffee you want to drink. Have you tried Phusion Passenger ( http://www.modrails.com/ )? It is trivial to install and makes Rails deployment a snap.

Or you can do what heroku does, and use thin. Just gem install it, and start it. Java has a similar approach with jetty. Both solutions are inadequate, at least standalone, as you get a few more users or require more security/performance. But for starting, it is simple and easy.

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#136

Post by stilkov »

rbrcurtis wrote: post #131
andrewmccall wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java for most startups won't be Java EE. My best experience with Java recently has been with Jetty as an application server. It's fast and it's lightweight. I usually run Jetty behind nginx and don't generally need to configure Jetty to do anything. The whole Tomcat and connectors for apache configuration from a few years ago is well and truly behind me.

I think one major difference/hurdle of java web development and deployment is the fact that you HAVE to setup something like nginx in front of the app server or else you're working on port 8080 for everything. Or you have to know how to configure the app server for port 80 directly and mitigate the security concerns of doing so. By comparison, apache defaults to port 80, no tricks required.

If one is unable to change the port from its default, one doesn't have any business in developing web apps in any technology. Just sayin'.

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#137

Post by _grrr »

rbrcurtis wrote: post #129
_grrr wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

++Jetty. It's also great for development as it handles hot swapping of code changes, so they can be tested immediately without a container restart.

what version of jetty are you using? Last I looked, hot swapping code was a huge PITA and not an out-of-box config.

Jetty 6 (with Tapestry5).

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#138

Post by adamcrow64 »

darreld wrote: post #109
visural wrote: post #85

My startup http://www.onmydoorstep.com.au/ is Java/Wicket/Guice/Lucene based. Java's greatest strength is it's speed, a dearth of open-source libraries for pretty much anything you'd need. It's very possible to write light-weight simple code, if you shift out of the enterprise mind-set.

I think you meant a wealth of open-source libraries. There certainly isn't a shortage.

A Plethera might be a better one.

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#139

Post by pconf »

spreiti wrote: post #46
endtime wrote: post #3

I've be very scared of a web startup that chose Java over Python or Ruby. Why subject yourself to Java? RoR and Django are both solid platforms (among others).

Given the choice to develop in the Java, Python or Ruby language, I'd choose Python and Ruby over Java. But given the choice to develop on the Java, Python or Ruby platform, I'd choose the Java platform over the 2 others any day because with the Java platform I can choose to develop in Java, Groovy, Scala etc. and have many useful OS libraries at my disposal. I'm just working on my web startup using Groovy and Grails…

For our webapp the sweet spot has been Java/Tomcat for it's stability and security with python methods compiled into Java bytecode for regex and other methods that are cumbersome in Java.

The downside is that Jython throws more runtime exceptions. OTOH it has incentivized a ramp-up in unit testing (Maven, Selenium).

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#140

Post by phoenix24 »

I've seen a lot of startups using Java for web application development. Its not not that they are unaware of the other dynamic languages or the new rapid prototyping web app framework. But I guess its due to their reluctance to move to the new setup.
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