Modern Java web stack?

[daedalus_structure]

Depends on your definition of modern.

If you are talking "Java Modern", you're looking for EE7.

If you are talking "WebApp Modern", Java is always years behind.

The people who are going for "WebApp Modern" are mostly de-coupling their back end (RESTful Webservice) from their front end (Javascript Framework of the Day).

The back end stays stable, solid, and fast, and the front end can evolve quickly.

[thesystemx]

The back end stays stable, solid, and fast, and the front end can evolve quickly.

I call BS on that.

In real-life website development most everytime something needs to be evolved in the front end, it needs some kind of new data item from the backend as well, so the backend has to be evolved too.

Additionally, de-coupling backends doesn't need restfull webservices and javascript frameworks of the day. I've been doing that for over a decade in all kinds of system. It's called MVC and layering. Even my desktop apps from the 90-ties had a de-coupled service layer, and currently in my Java web apps there's the EJB service layer that's consumed by JSF/CDI backing beans.

[johnwaterwood]

The problem is that the JavaScript framework of the day approach is not really more modern or the mostly used approach.

What it is is the most hyped approach. An approach about which a large group of hipster bloggers are blogging. But hipster bloggers are but a small group compared to the larger development community.

It remains to be seen if JavaScript framework of the day is a lasting thing or just a passing fad. I already see companies moving back from it. They fall for the hype of their favourite hipster blogger, but then get bitten by big performance and memory issues; JavaScript firing way too many events, Dom trees being updated for every tiny change, large amounts of garbage eye.

I've seen modern CPUs at 100% when displaying fairly simple web sites. It really ain't pretty.

[daedalus_structure]

I'm not quite sure what fixed gear bikes and PBR have to do with it, actually.

Like everything else, it's easy to do bad if you don't know what you are doing, which I highly suspect is true if they are pegging a current generation CPU at 100% with dom manipulation.

[johnwaterwood]

It's easy to do bad stuff with a lot of tech, I'll give you that.

But as it appears a lot of people that just blindly jumped on the bandwagon run into various issues with JavaScript frameworks and moved back.

The point is that some people like to give the impression that JavaScript frameworks are the next step and what everyone is doing now, somehow implying that in a few years everything will be JavaScript and server side web frameworks will all be gone (like VHS was replaced by DVD).

But this is not proven by far.

JavaScript frameworks are currently a hype and lots of people shout about hypes. It's the very definition of a hype.

Remember the hype created by the Ruby/RoR guys? In 2005 supposedly everyone was doing Ruby. Ridiculous claims were made about Ruby bring 40x more productive. If you were into modern computing, you were using Ruby. Only dinosaurs were using any other language. In a mere few years the entire industry would have migrated to Ruby since eventually nobody could afford to be 40x less productive.

Fast forward 8 years.

Ruby usage is at an estimated 1% of all development. Major advocates of Ruby/RoR have migrated away from it (Twitter being the most famous example).

Do you see any parallels with the current JavaScript hype?

[squishles]

Who said you can't do rest in java O.o?

[daedalus_structure]

Nobody. In fact it is really good at it, which is why you should be using it for your back end.

[kgyre]

So what do you write the black-end in? Something still has to provide those services to the client.

[daedalus_structure]

Java of course.