Recent turns of events have moved me onto a new application to be written atop an old platform. The stack consists of WebSphere AD 5, J2EE 1.4 (with EJB), Struts 1.2, and some Rube Goldberg approaches. It’s outdated and bloated, but since there’s no time to shift to anything modern, we’ll add more new code atop it.
It’s a very common problem these days.
Over a decade ago, many said that J2EE would become the “COBOL of the 21st Century.” That prediction has come true, but not in a good way. By saying that, proponents meant “ubiquitous,” but what we got instead was “entrenched” and “obsolete.”
This is largely due to the size of the ship and the number of course corrections. J2EE is a huge designed-by-committee camel that dramatically shifted with each major release as it crushed under its own weight. And with each successive round, the champions of lighter enterprise Java (Rod Johnson, Bruce Tate, Anil Hemrajani, etc.) have either seen their solutions become bloatware themselves, or have abandoned enterprise Java altogether. No wonder J2EE is now called the dead man walking.
J2EE’s size and needless complexity have worked against each other. Newer, better, lighter solutions eventually came around, but bloated, entrenched projects found it difficult or impossible to move to them.
While it doesn’t hold a candle to dynamic languages, I actually like Java and parts of J2EE (cleanly-designed servlets, JSPs, and services are good things). It’s just the bloat and do-overs which accompany it that drive me nuts. I’ve often wondered why Java and C++ fall victim to this far more than other languages. Perhaps it’s the culture and personality that comes with static typing: the classic security vs. freedom trade-off. Folks who are attracted to J2EE’s everything in triplicate and research project mindset often don’t understand the costs of technical debt or the benefits of clean and simple design.
Maybe I’m just too accustomed to quickly building apps that have maximum function with minimum code. I’ll code in whatever language is required, but I will not abandon my push for agility, simplicity, and elegance.
