Matt RaibleMatt Raible is a Web Developer and Java Champion. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

The Angular Mini-Book The Angular Mini-Book is a guide to getting started with Angular. You'll learn how to develop a bare-bones application, test it, and deploy it. Then you'll move on to adding Bootstrap, Angular Material, continuous integration, and authentication.

Spring Boot is a popular framework for building REST APIs. You'll learn how to integrate Angular with Spring Boot and use security best practices like HTTPS and a content security policy.

For book updates, follow @angular_book on Twitter.

The JHipster Mini-Book The JHipster Mini-Book is a guide to getting started with hip technologies today: Angular, Bootstrap, and Spring Boot. All of these frameworks are wrapped up in an easy-to-use project called JHipster.

This book shows you how to build an app with JHipster, and guides you through the plethora of tools, techniques and options you can use. Furthermore, it explains the UI and API building blocks so you understand the underpinnings of your great application.

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Over 10 years ago, I wrote my first blog post. Since then, I've authored books, had kids, traveled the world, found Trish and blogged about it all.

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Friday January 21, 2005

RE: Hype: Ruby on Rails

Patrick thinks that Ruby on Rails is all hype.

Now maybe I'm just a bit biased since my framework isn't getting all the slashdotters oohing and awwing over it, but I think Ruby on Rails is way over hyped. The tutorial here is great and gave me a very good overview of what it does. At the end of the day, RoR is simply a RESTful CRUD framework.

I'd like to agree with Patrick, because that is my natural tendency when I see a project that everyone praises. But I know better. I think it's better not to speculate on the productivity or usefulness of a framework until you've used it to develop an app.

That's what I did with Spring, WebWork, Tapestry and JSF last year. Now I feel like I know "the truth" and whether one framework is better than the other. The truth is they all have strengths and they all have weaknesses. While one might work well for one project, it might not for the next. I think the best thing is that you don't setup yourself for framework lock-in. If you only know one web framework for Java, you should probably pick up a book and develop an app with another framework - just to see how things are done differently. Now that I've used all of the Big 5 in Java, I don't think it would be that hard to migrate an app from one framework to next.

So what am I trying to say? Don't bash on a framework until you've tried it. And I don't mean toying around with it on a Tuesday night, I mean using it for a real-world project. I'll probably diving in and doing a little Rails development later this year. Why? So I can see if all the hype is accurate. ;-)

Posted in Java at Jan 21 2005, 01:40:37 PM MST 8 Comments
Comments:

I wrote a nice long comment, and then somehow when I hit Post it went poof (yes, I answered the math question, but I didn't use a calculator, maybe I got it wrong ;-) So, here's my much abbreviated version: I agree with Matt: don't bash until you've tried it. And, in terms of Rails, I'm currently drinking the koolaid, after having spent 3 hours last night to install, read/learn, and build a complete web app, including authentication and security, file upload, and some CRUD stuff. It was dang impressive! Matt's AppFuse certainly helps startup of Java projects, but RoR is quite impressive. I keep finding myself saying, "why is Java better"? I come up with one reason, only to find Ruby/RoR has it covered, then find another, only to find it covered yet again. The Java world has far more choices and offerings in terms of open source add-ons/libraries/solutions, but I can for sure that for any personal project I'm already sold on RoR, and I'm thinking that if I get a couple more questions answered to my satisfaction on RoR, that this could be the real deal. At minimum, check out this movie: http://media.nextangle.com/rails/rails_setup.mov And, I found this tutorial to be the quickest rampup: http://darkhost.mine.nu:81/~vince/rails/tutorial.html Lastly, check out the login generator: http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/LoginGenerator

Posted by crb on January 21, 2005 at 06:17 PM MST #

The biggest difference I find between Rails and Java frameworks is not so much the framework design but the features of the languages themselves. More accurately, the difference between dynamic languages and statically-typed & (byte-)compiled languages has some powerful differences. I'm very impressed by Ruby's ability to include advanced OO features in such a simple and consise syntax. Clean use of mixins and adding functionality by attributes are two examples. A good example of dynamically adding functionality can be found by looking at ActiveRecord's belongs_to attribute. I see that I gain a getter/setter combo for the specified type. I can then code directly against that. Strongly-typed language compilers won't let you do that, AFAIK. Ruby can't replace the language that feeds my family just yet, but the writing is on the wall. What Ruby needs now is an IDE as intuitive as IntelliJ IDEA. :)

Posted by Kevin Williams on January 22, 2005 at 12:06 AM MST #

Kevin, have you looked at RDT, the Ruby environment for Eclipse? I just started using it on my RoR play project. I, like you, work on Java by day, so won't be leaving that real soon. I used to use IDEA, but I'm now a traitor and have gone over to the Eclipse camp, and am quite happy. Anyway, take a look at RDT...

Posted by crb on January 22, 2005 at 01:24 AM MST #

Has anyone taken a look at Beehive. BEA open sourced this last year which is a nice GUI wrapper for Struts based MVC programming. It uses this notion of page flows similar to that in WL Workshop. They're also working on a plugin for eclipse called Pollinate that I just started taking a look at. I am wondering if you have heard any "buzz" around this or if you played with it at all. So many frameworks...so little time!

Matt, I thought you posted a comparison of WebWork, Spring, and maybe Struts awhile back, possibly as a PPT presentation. Can you send me a link? Thanks!

Posted by Lou on January 23, 2005 at 01:30 PM MST #

Have you checked out gails? Groovy on rails? (just kidding.... )

Posted by Rick Hightower on January 23, 2005 at 02:12 PM MST #

"Don't bash on a framework until you've [really] tried it." Still... I'm glad you said such bad things about JSF last summer cause it started a nice talk about all this and it really helped me. I'm starting a JSF + Spring + Hibernate project!! So my word would be... keep bashing ;)

Posted by Cédric Dupont on January 24, 2005 at 08:30 AM MST #

Lou - the presentation you're thinking of is available at https://equinox.dev.java.net/framework-comparison/WebFrameworks.pdf.

Posted by Matt Raible on January 24, 2005 at 11:29 PM MST #

Well, actually it all depends on what you'd like to see in the result. I am just merely saying that this is all feasible.

Posted by mark, designer on February 01, 2005 at 09:19 AM MST #

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