I had no idea how awful Spring or JSP or whatever the heck it is this Java web-app is using was. I tried to add a button and a new page with a form on it and ended up editing something like 10 different files. All I got was a big null pointer exception error page. Even ASP.NET is simpler than this. God forbid I ever get to use J2EE.
I am tempted to get JRuby going and embed a small Ruby on Rails app within the JSP app. Nobody would notice and I am dead sure I can do all of that faster than adding one page using Spring and JSP.
And Eclipse is a PITA in comparison with the loveliness that TextMate is.
Enterprisey. Shoot the people who think everything has to be enterprisey. Seriously. Up. Against. A. Wall.
I am at the iiWAS and MoMM 2006 conference here in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. First day of the conference today which went OK. The opening ceremonies were too long (no wonder unconferences have become a reality) and I was disapointed that the Sultan could not make it. Not often you get the chance to see a real Sultan. Still the sessions had some good information and it was great seeing the huge diversity; Austrians, Portugese, Indonesians, North Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Malyasian, Scottish, Australians, Germans, French and myself as a South African slash Irish. It was also good to see young Atma Jaya students presenting their work. I am giving a talk tomorrow on multmedia distribution and IP rights.
I’ve spent the past hour or so with a co-worker trying to get a Cocoon+Java+RSS+MySQL+XSL+DELI system to do the simplest of tasks. What a nightmare. It is incredible in its flexiblitlity. I can’t think of much it can’t do. But what it does do is very little. It seems as though the chaps who built this system spent 90% of their time on the framework of the application and about 5% on the application itself. It has huge potential but all the bits that actually do things aren’t there. String replace? Nope. I had to find an XSL template that someone else had rewritten to get that.
It’s the autobahn without the Porsche. The scaffolding without the building. The bricks without the builder.
It’s cool and wonderful and so much fun to work with but ultimately it is insanity when all you want is to get the job done. The glass without the beer (thanks for that one, Elaine.)
This is where Ruby on Rails is kicking Java and .NET web-frameworks all over the park. They are visionary and capable of far more than Rails. But Rails actually does common tasks that you need to do. It is less flexible but ultimately more productive.
For those few edge cases that it can’t handle I’ll write a function in something else and pipe it in.
