Java Entrepreneur

Ruby on Rails, Python, PHP or Simply Rediscover JSP

Addendum 11/16/2005: I wrote this post to try and be funny, which is why I said it would be a "fictional outline." I've tried Ruby on Rails and think it is awesome and my personal homepage is written in PHP and has been since 2002. When your trying to post an article a day sometimes you hit and sometimes you miss. Call me what you want just don't call me late for dinner.

Proposals for sessions in the JavaOne 2006 conference are being asked for as of Nov. 1st. When I mentioned this to few colleagues and we started chatting about ideas. One idea we came up with and had a good laugh with was all the hype about the impending death of Java at the hands of the next Scripting language. I make an effort to never be a technology bigot and whenever something new comes along I try and keep and open mind. It just seems that since Java has gathered such a large following it is now a target. Consultants and book writers at large seem to be trying to start a feeding frenzy around the need to dump Java, retrain programmers, and start new projects using Ruby on Rails, Python, or PHP. What follows is a fictional outline of a talk given during a session at JavaOne 2006:

Title: Ruby on Rails, Python, PHP or Simply Rediscover JSP?

Overview: Why use Ruby on Rails, Python or PHP when we can use Java Server Pages (JSP) by themselves. There is no need for developers to spend the time to relearn another scripting language. Java gives a developer everything in JSP that you would find in any of these new scripting languages. It is easy to create a web application using only JSP pages and do what these other languages are doing. We can developer just as fast with JSP pages but forgetting everything we have learned about programming with Java. Think of JSP web application programming as Java programming redux.

Point #1: Java developers have always been told to separate the presentation layer from the business logic that exists in a web application. Well I say if Ruby on Rails, Python, PHP don't have to worry about a MVC pattern then why the hell should we? Lets just get on with it and let those all those artistic people that we don't understand anyway sort it out. All those other languages are finding way to address theses things so maybe we aren't giving those graphical design folks enough credit.

Point #2: Scalability may be an issue with JSP by itself but so might Ruby on Rails, Python or PHP so why worry about it. Again, we shouldn't worry about things like MVC patterns when the focus should be on speed of development alone. If it gets to be too much of a problem just slap another Linux box into the cluster that is running our application. Isn't that what they do with those other languages? I mean come on… those boxes are really cheap anyway.

Point #3: Speed of development is the main goal when using Ruby on Rails, Python or PHP. When your using JSP pages by themselves Java developer could knockout a web application in no time at all. The only obstacle that may get in the developer's way is the never-ending feeling that there are doing something terribly wrong. Forget about those old wise tales about how it is bad form to put a database connection block of code directly in a JSP. Think of how much time you will save by things like that in JSP.

Summary: The name of the game is speed and ease of use. By building web applications with JSP pages alone we get rid of all that overhead crap we have been dealing with all these years. Think about how easy it will be for the Java developers to build those web applications quickly when they don't have to worry about all those rules and layers they have been taught. Patterns are for chumps. So lets get on with it and bang out some web applications people!