I have been working with j2ee in corp. shops in the usa (boston) since nineties. I agree wholeheartedly with the original poster.

It is possible to see j2ee corp apps that run fast, but the entire j2ee tech stack must be configured perfectly and every line of java code perfectly written. Never happens in practice, or very rarely.

Programmers that write in java are less productive because of all the framework configuration, discovery and learning curves, etc. that are needed to build the scalable applications they are tasked to create. I work on j2ee apps that scale, but badly - poor performance and low availability at high numbers of concurrent users.

RIA with applets is a no-go, and a j2ee programming team capable of RIA without applets in j2ee along the lines of the very impressive thinkfree office will not be easy to assemble. applets in general are a deadend and the incompatibilities are astounding on a WORA-billed platform.

The entire universe of j2ee accoutremont: maven, ant, hibernate, jrun, junit, jmeter, on and on… the xml configuration files, all of this adds complexity, and team members, and increases code and chances for misconfiguration and errors in deployment.

Performance of j2ee is much better in recent years, but in 2008, i still use s-l-o-w j2ee applications every single day. the author of the post is right: ten years with little to show for it.

j2ee means all to frequently: no firefox ’cause we can’t support it, no mac, no linux. so, j2ee in the corp world means windows and IE. Not very hackerish. Or cool. Or fast. And I love windows as much as the others. I’m knocking most corp j2ee app development in the us, certainly 95% of it in boston in 2008.

The j2ee web application servers, and servlet containers frequently have their own problems which delay deployments and crash sites, etc. Things like weblogic, tomcat. Sometime you work in a j2ee shop that has one piece of the j2ee chain that’s a little older and it holds things up during deployment, retards performance of the j2ee application, or causes a recurring availability issue.

Jboss and related and similar j2ee enabling and complementary technologies are developed by toolmakers and when added to all the frameworks out there (ICEfaces, millions more), before you know it you’re using tech from dozens of vendors and keeping track of the lifecycles and updates becomes unmangeable. How about five, ten years from now? Where are the j2ee apps then? Who maintains them?

j2ee programmers need to know so many j2ee technologies that they even the best ones lack experience across the entire spectrum of technologies and so they learn on the job. And that takes time, and makes projects using j2ee later. They have less time to learn about anything but j2ee, and they think (my personal observation of many of them) you don’t know anything about computers if you don’t know java. Many have no experience of anything before java.

I already said above, j2ee apps scale - mostly not that well. Again, in my personal experience.

The JRE is not great. It is the weak link in many j2ee apps. Frequently incompat. between different j2ee apps which need a diff. version.

I have never ever seen a j2ee dev team that did anything more than pay cursory lipservice to agile development methodology.

I have seen during the nineties ecommerce buildout many scaled perl and scripting language LAMP applications and sites that filled millions of orders, charged millions of dollars, served millions of pages. So I know they scaled, because I saw them. J2ee’s scalability, to my mind, is frustratingly unevident when judged against these personal recollections. Most of the j2ee applications i have worked on slow down the more people are using them, etc. This is based on my daily working life in many j2ee-only shops in boston. I work with it for a living, and j2ee has paid my bills and put food on my table. I’m just simply agreeing with the original poster’s comments.

j2ee UI’s and UI development (JSF, java server faces): ack. Swing, struts, AWT: it just never happened correctly. Every j2ee dev team i work on has poor UI. I know, I know, your experience is different. Mine has been - java, j2ee UI is usually bad. I’m working on a VUI dialog designer for work that is an applet that interfaces with a j2ee backend. The UI is good, almost very good. I mentioned thinkfree office above. But almost all j2ee apps have poor UI and interface. In ten years, j2ee UI will be one of the main complaints about j2ee in hindsight, along with bloat, complexity, gross overuse, inappropriateness for a wide variety of programming problems, perfomance. Java is still too slow too often in 2008.

Gotta go work with more j2ee tomorrow at work, so I have to go. Just kidding about java and j2ee. It’s great.

Btw, O\one interesting new kit coming out allows Java developers to easily program SPOT objects (allowing the creationg of swarm networks, etc)

http://sunspotworld.com/

Some cool stuff keeps coming out for Java…

PHP? Phhhhtttt….spaghetti code that runs as scripts for webpages.

As someone mentioned, it’s predominant in the enterprise servers, there are some cool desktop apps like Azureus (desktops being where Java is weakest), and it is unparalleled in its dominance in the smaller devices arena -

More than 1 billion smartcards (including the SIM cards in your cellphones) are powered by Java to run the national healthcards of several countries and security cards (inc part of the US army)

Nearly 1 billion cellphones/PDAs run Java applications, and Java games are driving the profitability of the carriers and manufacturers.

Java will power the new high-definition blu-ray DVD players coming out this year, which will replace today’s DVD format.

Java will power interactive HDTV cable broadcasts by 2009.

End of Story

There doesn’t need to be, but the basic human urge to follow the “leader” (the “leader” in this case being the killer app of the week) ends up taking over in the minds of many programmers who forget that skill and design are more important than language in creating a killer app.

Java is a nice language. It’s not the greatest for everything, but no language is.

Every language has it’s uses (well most), the languages I find worthless are those that can only be used on one platform or situation, and brother Java isn’t one of them!

> … as I’m concerned making sure spelling and grammar is 100% correct is not
> exactly critical for a comment on a blog.

LOL.
And you were the one laughing at others.

> The language itself is *fundamentally* flawed in many ways, this is more
> significant and one of the reasons for its short-lived and abrupt death. I am
> not saying it is dead now but it is on the way and well over due already.

Short-lived ?
Last time I checked, Java was succesfull ever since the year of it’s release, which was 1995.
It is 10 years later, and Java is known to be most popular language, acording to the TIOBE index.
It is 10 years later, and Java is the most popular language on SourceForge.
It is 10 years later and Swing is the dominant GUI tookit.

At its 10th birthday, Java is known to achieve:

155+ million Java software downloads from java.com
4.5+ million Java software developers worldwide
140+ global wireless carriers providing mobile Java services
708+ million Java Powered mobile phones
1+ billion Java Cards

Abrupt death ?
According to what ?
To your <edit> claims ? Should I believe someone who doesn’t bother to check his spelling ?

It is fundamentally flawed ?
Again, according to whom ?

<edit>

<edit>

My command of the English language is absolutely fine, as far as I’m concerned making sure spelling and grammar is 100% correct is not exactly critical for a comment on a blog.

Beside the point, my comment still holds, if you have nothing intelligent to stay in a polite manner then get lost.<edit>

> On a second note, your comment is not related to the subject > of this blog.

Actually, it is, it’s indirectly related but since I was not talking to you and it has absolutely nothing to do with you .

> There is no such thing as the perfect language/platform.
> All languages/platforms are flawed.

This is true however Java is *more* flawed than many others.

The language itself is *fundamentally* flawed in many ways, this is more significant and one of the reasons for its short-lived and abrupt death. I am not saying it is dead now but it is on the way and well over due already.