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An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

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Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#31

Post by bhauer »

DennisP wrote: post #13

The position of things like Netty and Undertow at the top of the techempower benchmarks has me a little intrigued. How much hassle is it to write websites with servlets like that?

Undertow provides a Servlet container, so if you are already using a Servlet-based framework, the level of effort is fairly minimal. Though, Resin remains a very high-performance Servlet container as well in our benchmarks and if you need a broad set of Servlet features, Resin may be a better fit.

Another option is WildFly, which is the new JBoss application server that uses Undertow below the hood.

We are presently adapting our in-house framework to use Undertow natively (without the Servlet layer) and the effort to do so has been low, all things considered. If you're comfortably working with the internals of your framework, you may be able to do the same without a great deal of pain.

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#32

Post by benjaminpv »

Ironically the Java ecosystem could stand to use some garbage collection of its own: there's a ton of old, outdated info out there that both colors people's impressions of the language and teaches new players a whole manner of bad habits. I appreciate what this article's going for and hope there'll be follow-ups.

I use Java daily and though there's undoubtedly room for improvement (I'm looking forward to when tooling better supports stuff added in Java 8), I think a lot of the negativity that surrounds it is undeserved. There's definitely bloated XML-infested frameworks out there but the core's a real workhorse.

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#33

Post by AnimalMuppet »

exabrial wrote: post #3
netcraft wrote: post #2

What about dependency injection in modern java - is Guice or spring still the de facto standard?

I agree... can't live without Dependency Injection (one of the reasons I refuse to move off of Java). I've been using CDI and TomEE for small simple stuff (it just works). Can't stand Spring Framework anymore. It set out to replace the bloatware of Java EE 1.5 but it ended up becoming what it was meant to replace.

It occurs to me that dependency injection has this strange similarity to functional programming. I mean, clearly, you're playing with objects instead of functions, and they can have state, and so on, so it's not functional. But still, there's a similarity in how you're breaking things apart.

Spring: Maybe the problem is that Jave EE 1.5 was a reasonably good solution for the problems it was trying to solve? Maybe you can't do radically better and still actually solve the problems?

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#34

Post by bananas »

benjaminpv wrote: post #22
kodablah wrote: post #12

One of my opinions these days on javadoc is that you should be minimalist. Have nothing to say about the return type? Don't add @return. Same for @param. Just a sentence about the method/field/class? Just a single line /* * ... */ is fine. Have nothing of value to say on a method/field/class (e.g. a getter), don't add javadoc at all. I'm growing weary of large files with tons of redundant javadoc lines to make some c…

Seconded. I always bristle when I see javadocs that include things like 'returns an object of [x] type that...' You're dealing with strong types, the signature provides all this information already. That, combined with good variable names, should do a lot of the documentation for you. If you wanna document a method, document what problem it solves. Document any gotchas (or better yet, redesign them out o_~). Don't ju…

That pisses me off but the following is much worse. The commit comment that goes:

"checked in abstract_class.cpp"

Duh!

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#35

Post by eloisant »

cpprototypes wrote: post #29

I like the changes in Java 8, but I'm concerned about Java fragmentation between Oracle/OpenJDK and Android. It seems Android is stuck on Java 1.6 (since Dalvik is not "true Java" and is more like a VM that happens to implement a language very similar to Java 1.6). There's now a huge gap between 1.6 and 1.8. It's not just syntax like lambda and default methods. It's also the supporting API changes in collections (str…

There's always been some fragmentation between Dalvik and "real" Java. A lot of libraries don't work out of the box on Android.

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#36

Post by lmm »

The #1 thing you need to make Java usable is to abandon the JavaBean conventions. When every field requires 8 lines of boilerplate it's no wonder the code looks ugly (YAGNI, and if you do need it it's two keystrokes in your IDE to "encapsulate field"). public final fields are fine, and can get your data classes something close to readable.

I'd stick with maven for the build rather than Gradle; it's completely declarative and all the tools understand it. Learning a new language just to configure your build tool seems excessive.

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#37

Post by agibsonccc »

bpodgursky wrote: post #28
agibsonccc wrote: post #17

It's ironic, I'm slowly trying to move my development over to scala. I'll likely integrate gradle in to my stack (still use maven =/ mainly because I know all of its weird quirks) What have people's experiences with gradle been? I'm not a huge fan of groovy hence why I stayed away from it.

IMO Gradle has made huge improvements the past couple years (when I first started using it a few years ago it was incredibly unstable) but if you are a semi-power user of Maven I think you're going to find yourself frustrated using gradle still for a couple reasons (I've looked into this for my work recently, moving away from Ivy). Note I haven't extensively used Gradle, this is just from research: - Intellij has inc…

Really appreciate the insight, this is what I have found as well. Especially using intellij, it's still hard to beat. I'm always on the look out to use new stuff, but I'd rather wait a bit..

If I go hybrid JVM, I will likely just use SBT instead.. I think I'll keep an eye on gradle and see if it matures though.

One of the reasons I still use maven is like what you mentioned: the tooling, I don't find myself using xml most of the time (despite knowing it like the back of my hand anyways)

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#38

Post by pdevr »

twistedpair wrote: post #11
bsaul wrote: post #6

I'm back to java after having an unsatisfying experience 2 years ago with Spring MVC, (this time i use the "play framework"), and it seems to confirm my intuition that the language itself is really just fine. The problem lies more in bloated frameworks and corporate culture where everything needs to be standardized, regulated, and the purpose of a mandatory non-free training session. Add to that the fact that every s…

How's Play! compare to Spring? I'm working on a bloated Spring whale (1.5M LoC, 485 Spring XML config files) and wondering if something like Play! can do it better, or if complexity is simply a beast that will inevitably turn any project into a turgid mass. I ask since friends at Google will laugh at a bar if you even say "Spring," but I'm curious what else can do it all (Guice/Gin?). Perhaps nothing can and the tric…

Not sure what version of Spring you are using, but the newer versions allow you to annotate your way out of the need to have so many XML files.

Code bloat is a different beast. Unless the company decides to refactor and redesign the whole thing, you probably have to live with it, like the rest of us.

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#40

Post by nmjohn »

zwieback wrote: post #26

I'm using Java for the first time because of Android. I had played with Java when it first came out but have stayed with C/C++/C# for almost everything. I have to say that my Java experience isn't as unpleasant as I thought it would be. I always thought C# is what Java should have been but after learning a little idiomatic Java the reality is quite okay, really.

The way you phrased that sounds to me like you've been programming for a significant amount of time. If that is the case, the Java of today offers so much that a younger Java did not, and I suspect you would have had a more unpleasant with the java of 10 years ago.
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