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Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

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Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

Apache forks a child process with lower rights than root. App servers that run on port 80 do not without a native JNI lancher. The solution is native launcher, a router rule or iptables.

I think the parent is talking about living in a chmod 777 world. Or maybe he is tired of crazy symlink hacks so that sftp becomes an option. Some appservers put class cache in WEB-INF by default, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#152

Another perspective is that Salary and competition for Java programmers are way beyond affordable for most start ups who have not made it big. Java is widely used in Financial, Insurance sectors. (There are several others as well but I speak of these from personal experience) I can offer up to $95k for a top level Java programmer. I do not think start up salaries can go that high. Of course there are no big stock opt…

You can get top level Java programmers for $95K?! Where are you based??

Round here (Adelaide, Australia - not exactly a center of big business) $95K is a base Senior Java salary. Most people are doing contracts though, and rates start at $65/hour (roughly $110K/year) and go way up. I know some pretty average programmers on 6+ month contracts at $80/hour, and $100/hour isn't unknown.

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#153
post #55

We're using Java (and Google Web Toolkit) on thingloop.com, and it's working out great for us. In answer to your questions: 1) Yeah, good cheap Java hosting doesn't seem to exist. That said, I think the Rackspace Cloud and Amazon EC2 are great solutions and great value for money. 2) Java is a high performance language, if you get performance issues it'll be your design/archiecture. 3) thingloop.com, successful from a…

We're using Java/GWT also on Envolve (http://www.envolve.com)

It's been pretty spectacular so far.

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#154
post #59

#1 reason: Java is a verbose language with a rather verbose design philosophy/ecosystem which is not to say it's bad. it's actually really good, with lots of great qualities. but compared to PHP, Ruby and Python, it's rather verbose. As a general rule you can pound out way more feature points per hour in a less verbose language than a more verbose one. there are other factors, sure, but I think this is the biggest on…

You're perpetuating a myth. Verbosity doesn't equal less productivity. I would be really surprised if anyone here said their bottleneck in programming was the speed they can type. Also, all languages have their needless verbosity - look at 'end' vs '}' (ruby vs java). Which is the more verbose?

> Verbosity doesn't equal less productivity.

Disagree. And not based on myth. Based on direct experience over 25 years doing programming. Verbosity -- holding all other things equal -- does equal less productivity.

To put the argument in thumbnail form: it takes about the same amount of time for me to devise a programming design for something in Python as in Java. But to type in, run and test that design? Much less time with Python than Java. The human is the bottleneck at development time, in general, not the computer, not the runtime execution speed. I also only have a finite amount of display screen real estate, so with a more concise language I can "see" more feature points on the screen, all at once, when looking at source code. And since there are less LOC if I ever have to do code surgery or cut-and-paste things around I can do that faster too, in general, with a more concise language. But all arguments aside -- because they are irrelevant in the face of direct experience -- I can say that I now personally avoid choosing Java in all the personal projects I've initiated, and I also bias to advising startups to avoid it (in general) in favor of a lighter language. The issue is more complex when you're dealing with an external client and somebody else's business, however, because sometimes the benefits of Java outweigh it's verbosity -- and there's nothing wrong with choosing it if those factors are critical and pertinent to any particular project.

But when a design is clear, and my implementation choices are clear and fresh in my head, and I know almost exactly what LOC I'm going to write next, then yes I've found that "new line creation speed" does impact the overall time it's going to take to finish a particular feature or change. Years and years of observations backing this up.

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#155
post #17
post #14

I'm involved in multiple startups using Java - both the language and more broadly the JVM (Groovy, Scala). Despite all the bad news you might hear, as long as you stay clear of the bloated enterprise stuff it's a great platform and environment for a startup. Hosting used to be an impediment but these days VPS make it dead easy to run Java stuff.

//bloated enterprise stuff// by this you mean the frameworks like Spring, Struts or the buzzwords like JMS, EJBs?

avoid XML

avoid IDE's -- or at least, anything that causes your team to need an IDE just to counter-act some other linguistic or procedural vomit you often encounter in the typical Enterprise Java shop

avoid abstraction-for-the-sake-of-abstraction -- the Java ecosystem, not necessarily the language, is notorious for this

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#156
post #41
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ColdFusion is not associated with fun development, may be I'm wrong, but for me it is associated with plenty of config xmls and other enterpricy stuff.

Maybe it's been a while? Check out http://www.coldboxframework.com/ or http://fw1.riaforge.org/ as examples of the state of things these days.

Yep, Coldfusion is overly underestimated. It now supports script based syntax (similar to Java) and has a tonne of built-in useful functionality like Ehcache and more...

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#157
post #51

The Mibbit backend is Java. It gives us massive advantages over any competition. The JVM is extremely fast and optimized. We handle many thousands of requests a second on a few VPSes.

Hi you application is great , can you please give more info about how your servers are configured and how many VPS , are you using ?

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java/MySQL was right choice for Bazaarvoice 5 years ago, when we started. CouchDB will be my choice in today world.

care to share why?

Because CouchDB implements about 80% of what we need. I can reimplement core engine of Bazaarvoice engine after first year of development in few days using CouchDB. (About 5% of our work).

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#159
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're perpetuating a myth. Verbosity doesn't equal less productivity. I would be really surprised if anyone here said their bottleneck in programming was the speed they can type. Also, all languages have their needless verbosity - look at 'end' vs '}' (ruby vs java). Which is the more verbose?

> Verbosity doesn't equal less productivity. Disagree. And not based on myth. Based on direct experience over 25 years doing programming. Verbosity -- holding all other things equal -- does equal less productivity. To put the argument in thumbnail form: it takes about the same amount of time for me to devise a programming design for something in Python as in Java. But to type in, run and test that design? Much less t…

> Disagree. And not based on myth. Based on direct experience over 25 years doing programming. Verbosity -- holding all other things equal -- does equal less productivity.

Well, around 20 years here.

If you look at the extreme. Regular expressions. They're concise to the extreme. That has distinct disadvantages.

  * It's hard to parse
  * Easy to create errors
So clearly verbosity!=bad.

I started with basic but quickly moved on to creating large programs in assembly. I think once you've done that for a few years you start to look past the lines of code and more into general program structure and flow.

'public static final' isn't verbose. They're keywords. They're flags. They're not meaningful program structure, so your brain skips over them unless it needs to check what the flags are.

People often mistake keywords like the above for verbosity. The actual syntax of java code, eg {}(). etc is very concise.

Re: Ask HN: Any web startups using Java?

#160
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JRebel is worth a look for a similar experience. It reloads classes when they change so no server restarts required. http://www.zeroturnaround.com/jrebel/

As long as it costs money and is not open source, this will never become hip amongst the cool guys.

IDEA costs money, is not fully open source but is still hip. What gives?
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