Blog - 5 Reasons why I think I will not use Spring

[karldmoore]

Just wondered if anyone had any comments?
http://gorif.wordpress.com/2007/07/01/5-reasons-why-i-think-i-will-not-use-spring/

[Marten Deinum]

Just posted some :)



Regarding 1/2/3

You don't have to use XML configuration there are multiple options to configuring Spring. Annotations, XML, JavaConfig or use the Spring low-level-api yourselves. When you leave the realm of XML configuration you will be able to have strong typed back, no large xml files.

Regarding 4
Depends on what you want to use of Spring, if you want to use only DI and maybe some utility classes Spring is quite lightweight, if you want to use something more Spring becomes a bit more heavy. The only lag we experience is the 30 seconds startup time of tomcat, however this is mainly due to our database connection setup.

Regarding 5
Which features are you talking about? We use Spring transactions, aop support, without any hard reference to Spring? If you use Spring MVC your web-layer is referencing Spring, however you lower service/business/dao layer can stay clear of Spring.

Also as of Spring 2.0.x it is recommended that if you use Hibernate/JPA that you don't use the Hibernate-/JPATemplate approach anymore. But the normal recommended approach (for Hibernate that is the currentSession approach), this doesn't tie your dao layer to Spring in any regards.

[karldmoore]

It seems to be another one of these Spring myths posts. There's always a focus on XML, but there are so many other ways to do it these days. As for coupling, I think the documentation positively says don't couple your application to Spring!

[karldmoore]

Seems it's made it's way onto TSS.
http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=46041

[dr_pompeii]

i am happy with spring

i read the link

but the a good question for him would be

if he dont want use Spring for his 5 reasons, what other better option he can take???

regards

[Jörg Heinicke]

Seems it's made it's way onto TSS.

Why gets such a stuporous article such a publicity?

Jörg

[sami25]

Hi,

I read the link,

I am using spring for the past 1 1/2 to 2 years and I have used Spring MVC extensively. I am extremely happy with the performance and even configuration.

Point 1 of the link.
Any library including the JDK would have lot of classes, the point is that whether the library is helping you at the end of the day or not. If i have to use only the MVC or only the Dao Support, I wouldnt mind if the library contains 1000 classes or may maybe million, at the end of the day it should serve my purpose.

regarding configuration, I feel configuration is an art , it requires some experience and time to learn.
spring gives the flexibility to break your configuration into any number of files(modularization).
I normally use the following style <moduleXXX>-web.xml,<moduleXXX>-service.xml,<moduleXXX-dao.xml><moduleXXX>flow-web.xml(the furniture for my flow including beans,<moduleXXX>-flow.xml(the flow of the module if iam using a flow>

Point 2.
XML can be painful for administrators but I dont agree if a developer says XML is painful.
spring gives a out of the box bean to configure the values of the xml using propertyConfigurer.

point 3.
Spring provides a way to testing your configuration,
(
point 4.
as far as performance is concerned , the customer was happy with the performance,
there is nobody better than the customer being happy with the solution performance.

point 5.
spring doesnt lock you in, rather lets you use spring mvc at the presentation layer, and you choose your own framework for service layer and dao layer.

these are completely my thoughts based on my experience with spring,

[karldmoore]

Why gets such a stuporous article such a publicity?

I apologise if you think it's 'stuporous' (nice word :)) I was just interested to know what other people thought.

[debasishg]

I apologise if you think it's 'stuporous' (nice word :)) I was just interested to know what other people thought.

Karl -

I am sure Jorg was referring to the article getting focussed in TSS, not complaining about the fact that you have brought it up in this forum :). I enjoy all of your pointers which u put up in the META forum.

Cheers.
- Debasish

[Jörg Heinicke]

'stuporous' (nice word :))

I just looked it up in the dictionary. It was the nearest to the German word "stümperhaft" :) Other translations were dilettantish or amateurish. How would you actually say?


I am sure Jorg was referring to the article getting focussed in TSS

Exactly. So nothing to apologize for, Karl :)


I enjoy all of your pointers which u put up in the META forum.

I'm completely with Debasish here.

Jörg

[karldmoore]

I just looked it up in the dictionary. It was the nearest to the German word "stümperhaft" :) Other translations were dilettantish or amateurish. How would you actually say?

Amateurish would do it.


Exactly. So nothing to apologize for, Karl :)

Ok cool :).


I'm completely with Debasish here.

I'm glad other people find it useful :).

[karldmoore]

There's a follow up here, is this also 'stuporous'? :)
http://gorif.wordpress.com/2007/07/05/google-guice-1000-faster-than-spring/

[Jörg Heinicke]

http://gorif.wordpress.com/2007/07/05/google-guice-1000-faster-than-spring/

I wonder why he does only bashing without any analysis. If the difference between the two frameworks would be so significant it should be easy to point out the reason.

Jörg

[Marten Deinum]

He seems to keep bashing the xml configuration... I wonder if he has taken a look at the other configuration possiblities.

[kantorn]

Just a general thought on blogging....
Seems that the possibility to have your "fifteen minutes of fame" has gone a bit exagerated these days. There is a lot of Java blogs and curiously each and every one of them seem to be written by self-appointed Java top-of-the-line-experts. Well, if this guy has found other solutions... Good for him! Let him and his team use whatever framework he wishes, but....
*sigh* Getting pretty tired of all the complaining for bloated XML-configurations. Use another way if you are so fed up with XML. Using Spring is optional. Don't use it if you think it stinks!

[Andreas Senft]

Good summary, kantorn. I couldn't have stated it better :)

[Marten Deinum]

Maybe start a topic ' 5 reason why .... ' ;)

[karldmoore]

Getting pretty tired of all the complaining for bloated XML-configurations. Use another way if you are so fed up with XML. Using Spring is optional. Don't use it if you think it stinks!

I agree with you, the problem is I keep meeting people who've read these things without questioning what they've read. It's always nice when there are a constructive comments to support or shoot it down. It's so much easier to tell people read that as well, instead of me having to get into the same discussions over and over again.

[julien.dubois]

There's a guy who replied to this post with a good sense of humor :

http://jroller.com/page/wiradikusuma?entry=5_reasons_why_i_won

It's a good answer and it's also quite funny!

[pmularien]

Just a general thought on blogging....
Seems that the possibility to have your "fifteen minutes of fame" has gone a bit exagerated these days. There is a lot of Java blogs and curiously each and every one of them seem to be written by self-appointed Java top-of-the-line-experts. Well, if this guy has found other solutions... Good for him! Let him and his team use whatever framework he wishes, but....
*sigh* Getting pretty tired of all the complaining for bloated XML-configurations. Use another way if you are so fed up with XML. Using Spring is optional. Don't use it if you think it stinks!
But it's always easier to bash something without being analytical about it. If you write a poorly researched article bashing something without doing decent background research, people who don't read deeply will take it as fact. It's unfortunate that the editorial selection at TSS has gotten so poor that they publish blog entries like this as "fact" or at least as believable enough so that they make it onto the front page.

Since Spring's gotten enough of these types of articles published at this point, I wonder if the i21 folks (or the community) would be interested in publishing some articles comparing and contrasting Spring with other frameworks. I think a lot of the hubris is solely based on ignorance of what Spring is actually good at (that was my impression reading many of the comments on TSS and the author's blog). Thoughts?

[karldmoore]

Since Spring's gotten enough of these types of articles published at this point, I wonder if the i21 folks (or the community) would be interested in publishing some articles comparing and contrasting Spring with other frameworks. I think a lot of the hubris is solely based on ignorance of what Spring is actually good at (that was my impression reading many of the comments on TSS and the author's blog). Thoughts?

The complaints general seem to focus around XML, but there have been numerous articles answering this in the past. It would be good to see some more articles as you say, if it's from the source would people believe it?

[dr_pompeii]

like i said


if he dont want use Spring for his 5 reasons, what other better option he can take???


The complaints general seem to focus around XML, but there have been numerous articles answering this in the past.
really i cant see the huge porblem with xml, is easy , cumbersome??, i dont think so


I wonder if the i21 folks (or the community) would be interested in publishing some articles comparing and contrasting Spring with other frameworks.
yes, i am sure, this would be a real ballpain for other frameworks :),
and if TSS can post the results

[karldmoore]

i cant see the huge porblem with xml, is easy , cumbersome??, i dont think so

I think there are some valid points regarding the XML configuration, but all of these can be addressed in one way or another. IMHO, the point has been hashed and re-hashed soooo many times now there's not that much more to say.

[johnlon]

Keep posting javaconfig as an alternative but until it is out of experimental status and not so 'subject to change' who's going to rely on it?

[karldmoore]

This recent blog talks about this issue.
http://blog.interface21.com/main/2007/11/04/spring-java-configuration-moving-ahead/

[debasishg]

Some interesting thoughts on configuration here (http://www.jroller.com/Solomon/entry/should_that_external_configuration_be) as well ..

Cheers.
- Debasish