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Spring Boot Done Right: Lessons from a 400-Module Codebase

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Re: Spring Boot Done Right: Lessons from a 400-Module Codebase

#21

Post by the_arun »

switchbak wrote: post #19
ecshafer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% agree. I have seen enterprise spring applications that throw away all of the speed through huge amounts of hot path object creation, nested loops, absurd amounts of factories, etc. After going through enough AbstractFactoryFactory calls to make object in an n^3 loop, the framework doesn't matter.

There really is an unlimited potential for crappy code in the enterprise. I imagine the volume will increase drastically in the age of AI.

Usually languages are not the issue. It is the code that we write. As long as languages help us to find/debug a problem caused by crappy code - we should be good. Coding is kinda creative work. There is no standard to measure creativity or pitfalls of using wrong patterns. The incidents & RCAs usually find these. But most of the times it is already too late to fix core problem.

Re: Spring Boot Done Right: Lessons from a 400-Module Codebase

#22

Post by dukeyukey »

stackskipton wrote: post #8

Ops person here who has supported Java/SpringBoot applications. I think most of dislike of Java apps comes not from language or framework BUT from fact that most Java using workspaces are filled with mediocracy. They tend to be businesses with products that have extreme moats and thus quality of software barely matters. I imagine most people who would even read this medium article are dreaming of better than that.

Alternatively, I think of Java and Spring Boots as being incredibly valuable by letting companies that don't really have software as a core competency to make reasonably performant and structured applications.

Mediocrity will never not exist, and you unlock a lot of value by optimising for it.

Re: Spring Boot Done Right: Lessons from a 400-Module Codebase

#25

Post by faangguyindia »

ludovicianul wrote: post #10
faangguyindia wrote: post #5

I recently inherited java code base. Just rewrote it in Go. Now we are using a server which consumes 30% of ram what the existing one used to and the latency and throughput have all improved. Don't use these stupid java backend like sprinboot.

I wouldn’t reduce it to don't use Java/Spring Boot. Rewrites often (not always) look great because they remove years of accumulated complexity, not because the original stack was inherently bad. Just rewrite it in X doesn't "just work" for complex systems. It ignores risk, and the fact that design usually matters more than language.

i made 1 to 1 copy, not sliming anything.

Re: Spring Boot Done Right: Lessons from a 400-Module Codebase

#26

Post by dzonga »

sidcool wrote: post #2

Hacker news likes to dunk on Spring Boot, but its usage in enterprises is very very high.

it doesn't mean that usage of something being very high is a clever idea.

lots of people take meth - so are you gonna take meth too.

```@EnableConfigurationProperties(CasConfigurationProperties.class) @EnableScheduling @ConditionalOnFeatureEnabled(feature = CasFeatureModule.FeatureCatalog.SimpleMFA) @AutoConfiguration @Import({ CasSimpleMultifactorAuthenticationComponentSerializationConfiguration.class, CasSimpleMultifactorAuthenticationConfiguration.class, CasSimpleMultifactorAuthenticationEventExecutionPlanConfiguration.class, CasSimpleMultifactorAuthenticationMultifactorProviderBypassConfiguration.class, CasSimpleMultifactorAuthenticationRestConfiguration.class, CasSimpleMultifactorAuthenticationTicketCatalogConfiguration.class, CasSimpleMultifactorAuthenticationWebflowConfiguration.class }) public class CasSimpleMultifactorAuthenticationAutoConfiguration { }```

this is what we mean by "JavaCulture" - java | JVM really wonderful things but the culture is what sets these things back

someone can't just go in and understand things - they have to understand a bunch of notations too.

then if you work at a place and try do things differently the same people will tell you to revise your PR cz it ain't software engineering (or it won't scale)

Re: Spring Boot Done Right: Lessons from a 400-Module Codebase

#27

Post by cogman10 »

e7h4nz wrote: post #14

I worked on a core Spring Boot project for five or six years at a very large enterprise. In my opinion, the most dangerous thing about this framework is that it makes its core users feel far too self-assured. When looking at problems, your mind becomes consumed with how to force everything into design patterns—like architectural separation, DI, or interface / implementation split. This causes developers to lose sight…

Spring is such a massive framework and it definitely has parts that aren't, frankly, well done. More than once Spring has ultimately been the source of performance issues for us with the solution being to ditch spring and do things with just the JDK. A lot of those cases have been fixed, however, even in the best case spring will take something that could have been a single function call and turn it into a maze of 20 different function calls because it's handling all sorts of weird edge and corner cases that aren't applicable to your code. It also doesn't help that some things are simply bolted in which makes it even harder to understand what is going on under the covers.

It also doesn't help that it's really easy to end up bringing in the entire framework for what you assumed were single function portions of the framework.

That said, it's the framework you probably want to use if you are doing Java. Just not if you are doing fast java.

Re: Spring Boot Done Right: Lessons from a 400-Module Codebase

#28

Post by iririririr »

ludovicianul wrote: post #10
faangguyindia wrote: post #5

I recently inherited java code base. Just rewrote it in Go. Now we are using a server which consumes 30% of ram what the existing one used to and the latency and throughput have all improved. Don't use these stupid java backend like sprinboot.

I wouldn’t reduce it to don't use Java/Spring Boot. Rewrites often (not always) look great because they remove years of accumulated complexity, not because the original stack was inherently bad. Just rewrite it in X doesn't "just work" for complex systems. It ignores risk, and the fact that design usually matters more than language.

usually what you say is correct. but in case of entreprise java, just look at the article. you have no way of knowing or controlling which essential class your application will be running because some intern merged a similarly named class two hundred levels down in the codebase and now that is handling all your db queries. and it's not a bug but a highly praised feature.

it's useless abstractions for the sake of useless abstractions.

java was designed so that american architecs could write a few interfaces and cheap workforce overseas could implement the actual code.

and the EE stuff evolved in a way that features could be shipped just by adding a new component that would inject itself in the right places. java "engineers" have no idea how http or cookies work, but they know where to load the spring-auth bean in a 2mb maven config.

so, any rewrite from java is an exception to the rewrites are only good because you cleaned up old features rule.

Re: Spring Boot Done Right: Lessons from a 400-Module Codebase

#29

Post by bberrry »

dukeyukey wrote: post #23
sidcool wrote: post #2

Hacker news likes to dunk on Spring Boot, but its usage in enterprises is very very high.

Even in startups, lots of places are on Spring Boot (albeit more often using Kotlin over Java).

My favorite stack, Kotlin with Spring Boot. A real delight to work with

Re: Spring Boot Done Right: Lessons from a 400-Module Codebase

#30

Post by antonymoose »

e7h4nz wrote: post #14

I worked on a core Spring Boot project for five or six years at a very large enterprise. In my opinion, the most dangerous thing about this framework is that it makes its core users feel far too self-assured. When looking at problems, your mind becomes consumed with how to force everything into design patterns—like architectural separation, DI, or interface / implementation split. This causes developers to lose sight…

Funny how that works - I started with Spring both before and after Boot as well as some Scala.

I wouldn’t trade Java / Spring for the world. It forces a coherence, perhaps not perfectly, but it provides guidelines to follow.

I’ve been stuck in Node / TypeScript / Microservice hell for most of the last 15 years and I couldn’t hate it more. The open-source ecosystem is extremely lacking, even now, on something like a good XML library. I think we’ve got four different ones installed in our core platform each handling different needs (traversal, generation, manipulation, validation).

On top of it all, since there isn’t “one way” we’ve got several dozen micro services. There isn’t a single bit of consistency other than “Express.” Logging, authentication, routing, validation - it’s all completely up in the air. It robs us all of efficiency from the lack of common language and pattern. We spend more time refreshing ourselves on any given project than doing feature work or bug fixes.

Madness!

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