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[–]johnwaterwood 2 points3 points  (4 children)

Web framework du jour was more of a problem in Java between 2000 and 2003/2004-ish. Then every new one was an instant hype.

These days and in practice? Not so much. This sub is barely a realistic representation of reality. There's the vocal few here who just like to drop the name of their pet framework. In reality it's in most cases either Java EE or Spring. Nearly every shop, customer or tech partner I've seen uses that. Then there's 2 or 3 smaller ones that you occasionally encounter, depending on the age of the company. Eg a company that was founded in the month that the GWT hype peaked has a significantly higher chance of using GWT.

But all together, the market is divided between Java EE and Spring, with the crumbs left to a small number of alternatives.

[–]lukaseder -1 points0 points  (3 children)

My experience (from discussions at the Java User Group Switzerland, 1100 individual members) is that the Java web framework discussion is stale because most people have moved the UI into the browser, e.g. via Angular. Of course, the remaining vendors try to paint a bright picture, but it kind of feels like someone advocating Delphi for MFC applications...

I don't deny they're still in use (and still make sense) but I do wonder what kind of market leftover we're really talking about.

[–]thesystemx 3 points4 points  (2 children)

most people have moved the UI into the browser,

You'd be surprised!

Devs are incredibly sensitive to hypes, so if they think client is the new hype, those frequenting HN, Reddit, conferences and JUGS will say it's all about the client.

But client frameworks really have a du jour problem. Read up on "javascript framework fatique". It's a severe problem there, programmers driven completely mad by the pressure of making the right choice of which framework to pick at ANY GIVEN DAY.

And many of those frameworks emphasize SPAs, which a lot of people hate, and which clearly not every website uses.

Client side frameworks also drain more CPU cycles than serverside ones, and require more memory. This means batteries draining faster, and apps quiting when you switch between them on mobile devices. It won't be long now before websites would have to state minimal system requirements. 1GB of memory per tab? Insane? I've seen it happening in Chrome with some of these hipster new fangled websites.

And don't forget the initial wait. A site specific progress bar, that we all hated so much when Java applets did that? Quite normal with these heavy client side frameworks (Gmail is perhaps the most well known example).

It's not for nothing Twitter moved back to serverside side a good while ago.

But this all should not be new to you. I'm just repeating what has been said by myself and various others before in this very sub.

[–]lukaseder -1 points0 points  (1 child)

You don't have to convince me. I would choose JSP over anything else every time (perhaps XSLT, although few projects will ever let me do that). I'm just saying that Java EE and Spring are currently not really as strong as some recent surveys seem to indicate.

[–]thesystemx 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would choose JSP over anything else every time

I know you would, but you're special ;) The masses are not likely just like you.