Software for the Web

Here’s a recent article from CNN Money on the value of web-based software for managing a business.

Life at Basecamp - six months in - Jul. 8, 2008.

As great as Basecamp is though (we use it), it’s not a magic bullet.

But as you grow, listen up: Expect to either make a major investment in developing your own financial and tracking software that works with Basecamp to make it do what you need (37Signals provides an open applications development toolset, so this is certainly possible), or budget for integrating another, more traditional, and more complex project-management system with Basecamp - or plan on abandoning the software entirely.

This is exactly what make custom software development so valuable. It’s a smart move to get started with a best-of-breed tool that you can use right out of the box. But, as you depend on it more and more you’ll realize that it’s taking over your business. You’ll be forced to shape more and more of your business practices around the way the software works. Ultimately, that’s not a good thing.

When best-of-breed either isn’t good enough or just starts to get in your way, that’s when you need to call a custom software developer and system integrator like Evans Codeworks. They can integrate the existing package into a system which keeps the best and none or some of the rest. The resulting solution leverages all of the good from your existing investment and gives you the freedom to improve on the parts that don’t work so well for you.

This is reply to Ali Loghmanis post “Why is Web UI Development Slow?” on DZone.

Nice post Ali.

I have to agree with you. HTML and Ajax is the best solution out there right now. Granted, the world would be a better place if we didn’t have HTML and could code everything straight in our language of choice. The fact is however that we’ll be stuck with HTML for years to come. So we’d better figure out a way to be productive with HTML in the mix.

Re: the cross-browser issues. I used to struggle with those issues as well. Did for years. The javascript frameworks such as Dojo, MooTools, JQuery, Prototype and ExtJS that have come out in the last few years have made the cross-browser issue all but non-existant for me.

The problem that the HTML layer introduces is a break from the server-side runtime environment. It’s a problem no matter what language or framework you use. It’s a problem with the underlying web ecosystem.

The best way to work around it, to bring the backend and front-end closer together is to embrace it. Stop trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Do one of two things:

1) Build rich interfaces using something like Flex or Flash (as someone mentioned). However, this just swaps around the pros and cons. RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) have many advantages, slick looking UIs not being the least among them. They don’t solve the basic problem howeer. They make UI construction easier. But you’e still got to integrate with all the backend systems such as XML-RPC and SOAP-based web-services. Plus it’s a whole new syntax and development infrastructure to get accustomed to.

2) Expose data access on the server-side via JSON or XML formatted data feeds via services and construct UIs with using JavaScript for some things. I’ve seen component-oriented JavaScript frameworks, ExtJS comes to mind, tend to suck developers in, encouraging them to build entire UIs with Javascript components. This is a huge learning curve and can result in a real mess. I’e seen it happen. So I recommend using Javascript just to handle whatever needs to be dynamic after the screen has rendered. This leaves the majority of screen functionality to be coded on the server side, while providing the responsiveness and esthetic appeal of a responsive, dynamic, javascript-enabled interface.

My big thing is that I don’t need more tools in order to build better apps in less time. I already have all the tools I need. I don’t need more syntaxes, toolkits, development environments, etc. I have a great deal of success building apps with just the fundamentals of HTML, JavaScript and a server-side scripting language.

I’ve found it’s much more effective for me to stop looking outward to the developer community for a framework that will solve all my problems. I’ve been disappointed by hyped-up solutions too many times. I’m finding that by being more diligent and more clever with the fundamental components of the environment (web, desktop, mobile) and server-side language I’m developing with, I’m able to develop more functionality in much less time. And the resulting application is simpler and easier to understand and maintain (because there are fewer frameworks to understand).

I think it’s great that your readers are suggesting alternative frameworks. But, just like wearing Air Jordans won’t make you play basketball like Michael Jordan, using a better framework won’t make you a better developer. I don’t mean this as a criticism at all. As Donald Knuth said, “Software is Hard”.

We should experiment with different architectures and solutions throughout our careers. We must continue to learn and grow as developers. We shouldn’t forget that it’s our skill that makes us good though. It’s not the framework we use. And to say that using one framework or another is going to solve the problem of apps being hard to use isn’t accurate. The gains from using one framework or another are marginal compared to the gains you get from experience.

So, all things being equal, keep things simple. Complexity begets more complexity, which ultimately slows you down.

Until the fundamentals of building web applications change so that we don’t need to use markup, the simplest, best approach (in my opinion) is to use HTML and javascript for the UI and a scripting language on the backend.

Lastly, if you’re interested in some more of my thoughts on this topic, read a post I recently made title “Why are there so many Java web frameworks?”

Have at it everyone!

Amazon S3 is cheap, essentially limitless online storage. If this is the first time you’ve heard of S3, you’ll find everything you need to know about it online at the S3 homepage.

For those of you that are interested or already using S3, I have three questions.

1. How do you use S3?
2. What do you use it for?
3. What software do you use to interact with S3?

These questions come from my own experience working with S3.

The only solid client I’ve found for working with S3 is Transmit from Panic. Transmit allows me to work interact with S3 exactly as if it were an FTP server. It’s a beautiful thing.

On Windows however I haven’t been able to find anything reliable.

I’ve tried the S3Fox Firefox extension. It’s buggy as heck. I’ve contacted the author of the extensions author offering to help out with bug fixes and added features. I never heard back though. So that’s sad.

I’ve seen a number of other products, the seemingly most popular being JungleDisk. Almost all of these are geared for drive backups. That’s just not the way I need to use S3.

I’ve tried JetS3t. But it’s also pretty buggy. The kind of stuff it barfs on is not knowing how to map a folder on S3 to a folder on my local drive. That just totally baffles me.

WebDrive I have to say has made me pretty happy. Still it doesn’t have that “it just feels right” quality about it.

The main thing I use S3 for is storing my iTunes movies and music. I regularly work on 3-4 different computers. I don’t want to replicate my entire 50 gigs or so of iTunes data. So I just stash it up on S3 and then download songs as I want to listen to them.

We’re considering building an S3 client that better supports the type of more casual usage model that I described. Before we head down that road though we want to get some feedback from the rest of the world out there on how they use S3.

If you’d be interested in seeing new and better ways to interact with Amazon S3, let us know.

I posted a week or so ago about my solidifying realization that Java is no longer (if it ever was) one of the better languages for building web-apps.

The original article, Why Are There So Many Java Web Frameworks? can be found here.

One of the points made in that article was that as you mix different frameworks into an application you end up having to tweak or work around attributes of each framework that aren’t compatible with, or are undermined by features of another app.

For example …

A really good example of this, and the one that impacts me the most right now is probably how Spring and the hot-deploy capabilities of Tomcat interact.

When Tomcat reloads a class after the source file is changed, it dumps/clears the web context and reloads or rebuilds it. This is typical for the various application servers I’ve worked with (including Jetty, WebLogic and others). When Spring is being used, the context dump also dumps the Spring context, meaning that all of the beans that Spring manages need to be reloaded. Yuck!

Spring does have a refresh method which may avert some of the greediness of this process. I’ve never been able to implement it though because I don’t usually have control over the dispatcher servlet because I’m using Struts! This is yet another example of how frameworks compound application complexity when used together.

The net result for me is this. On an application with 3164 classes and 405 beans managed by Spring it takes me 63 seconds for the hot-deploy mechanism to pick up my changes.

So, in Java:

• I forgot a semicolon: Add a semi-colon, wait 63 seconds, refresh the screen in my browser.
• I need to change business logic: Change business logic, wait 63 seconds, refresh the screen in my browser.
• I need to tweak formatting: Tweak formatting, wait 63 seconds, refresh the screen in my browser.

Ugh!

In any interpreted language:

• Do anything. Inhale, refresh the screen in my browser, exhale, see the modified code in action.

The dream

Here’s what’s great about Java.

1. It runs everywhere.
2. There are an almost infinite number of libraries, tools (including IDEs) and frameworks available.

If you read almost any Java blog or talk to any junior to mid-level Java developer they’ll cite those two attributes as reasons why Java is so wonderful. There may be other reasons in addition. But you’re almost guaranteed to hear those two. Oh, you may also hear “It’s so much better than C++”. Who’s writes web apps in C++ though?

In my experience …

Unfortunately however, that’s not the whole story. If you start asking around, talking to Java developers with more experience, and particularly those who’ve worked in other language environments, particularly using interpreted languages, you’ll start to fill in more of the picture.

1. Application servers start to get more and more difficult to deal with during development as the size of the application increases. So, by the time I get to take advantage of all of the support for “enterprise-level” applications that Java promised, I’ve discovered more than enough difficulties to offset what I thought I would gain.
2. I’ve worked with dozens to hundreds of frameworks over the years. Every framework solves (or at least claims to solve) a problem. Unfortunately though, for every problem it solves, it creates 2 new ones. Sometimes I have to deal with them. Sometimes I don’t. When I do have to deal with them it’s usually twice as hard to solve the new problems as it would have been to just deal with the original problem that the framework solved.
3. I get bored and lose a lot of time and focus while waiting for my darned application server to redeploy 50 times a day. Fortunately though this leaves me a lot of time to check the news on CNN and see what’s new on YouTube.
4. Spring proxying is fantastic in terms of delivering a real platform for modular, pluggable, SOAs (Service Oriented Architectures). But it broke my debugger! My stack traces are full of references to proxies that I can’t pull up in my IDE. I have to know where the exception is occurring before I can figured out where to look to find the problem.

I could go on. But you get the point.

So have at it!

Live and let live I say. If you’re happy with your development life-cycle, the speed at which you develop applications and the tools available to make you more productive I’m truly happy for you. I would, however encourage you to look further afield. Try using some different languages. Try NOT using frameworks and just deal with the problems that the Java fundamentals (things like Servlets and JDBC as opposed to component-based UIs based on markup and ORM (object relational modeling) tools. You’ll be surprised how much faster your applications are. Whatever you think you’ll gain most likely won’t be worth the complexity and learning curve to attain it.

And lastly, if you’re a framework developer, keep it up! There may be a killer app out there that will boost Java past the yuckiness I’ve described. And you may be just the right guy to discover and/or develop it.

A final clarification

Just as a final clarification, lest you think that I’m a Java hater, I’m not saying that Java is bad. I’m just saying that it’s not the best tool, or even the best starting point for building applications for the web.

I feel that a lot of businesses have felt the need to embrace “enterprisey” platforms. At the same time, they’ve felt the need to embrace an increasingly web-based delivery model and Java has catered to that crowd. Businesses have embraced Java mostly because there weren’t any better alternatives, and or they didn’t have enough experience and knowledge about Java to be discerning or find alternatives. That is to say that there weren’t other platforms that catered to the crowd interested in “enterprise-scale web applications” to the degree that Java and Sun did. So Java was a safe choice for managers and developers starting out and looking for a technology to use as the basis for their career.

My thoughts in this article are intended to encourage IT managers and developers to look outside of the vast confines (isn’t that an oxy-moron?) of the Java landscape and consider options and alternatives for enterprise-scale computing platforms. It’s become simpler and simpler to achieve scalability (one of the biggest demands from the “enterprise” crowd) since Java became King of the Enterprise. And I think it’s time for businesses, particularly IT managers and senior/lead/principal developers and engineers to build on a platform of simpler, more nimble technologies to meet ever increasing demands for agility in the marketplace.

Every day it seems I read an announcement of the release of a new Java framework, or an upgrade release for an older framework.

Three facts should tip you off to a problem with using Java for web projects:

1. There are a lot of Java frameworks for building web-apps.
2. Many of these frameworks try to solve the same set of problems.
3. Many frameworks are built just to improve upon weaknesses in other frameworks.

The third point causes the most concern. If every framework needs yet another framework to make it complete, then you’re never going to end up with a complete solution. You’re going to be passing the buck endlessly, and forever looking for a solution to your immediate problem.

Next question is, why are there so many of them? Surely if someone could build the perfect Java framework for building web-apps someone would have over the last ten years.

This leads me to think that:

“You can only put so much lipstick on a pig.”

Java is just the wrong tool for building web-apps. Scripting languages are far superior. The main reason for this is the statically compiled nature of Java. Interpreted languages will give you a much faster and continuous development cycle.

I welcome your comments on this topic. If you think I’m wrong, show me how and why. In particular, tell me what combinations of frameworks work best for you.