If you count my two years of summer internships as one year of professional experience, I have now four years of experience writing Java applications. The catch is, I have come to deeply despise Java enterprise software development. It is painfully bureaucratic to the point where no matter how good the money is, it's just not worth it anymore. On top of that, a lot of the "enterprise software" that you have to use turns out to be a load of crap.
At the top of my list of things that I have come to hate about writing Java "enterprise" software is JavaServer Faces. We're working on a web application that makes extensive use of the JSF components that are provided by an older version of NetBeans called Java Studio Creator, and that have been carried over into newer versions of NetBeans.
My favorite thing that just sucks about this library is when things literally stop working after a while of testing the software, and having made no changes to the code. A few days ago, while I was driving with Rachel, we talked about this and found that we had similar experiences with this craptastic library that was created as a last ditch effort to compete with ASP.NET Web Forms from Microsoft. Nothing makes you want to show up at your job like being forced to use a toolkit that literally, without modification to your code, just stops working!
Things have reached a point where I just don't give a crap anymore. The very nature of this platform no longer appeals to me. Java Enterprise Edition is so bureaucratic in that it requires so many configuration files, so much packaging, etc., etc., etc. that I have decided that I am going to get back into learning .NET and develop for Microsoft platforms. .NET may not be a perfect platform in its own right, but based on my experience with Java, and that of other Java developers I know who have worked with .NET, it beats the pants off of anything in the Java world.
So score one for the Evil Empire from Redmond.
At the top of my list of things that I have come to hate about writing Java "enterprise" software is JavaServer Faces. We're working on a web application that makes extensive use of the JSF components that are provided by an older version of NetBeans called Java Studio Creator, and that have been carried over into newer versions of NetBeans.
My favorite thing that just sucks about this library is when things literally stop working after a while of testing the software, and having made no changes to the code. A few days ago, while I was driving with Rachel, we talked about this and found that we had similar experiences with this craptastic library that was created as a last ditch effort to compete with ASP.NET Web Forms from Microsoft. Nothing makes you want to show up at your job like being forced to use a toolkit that literally, without modification to your code, just stops working!
Things have reached a point where I just don't give a crap anymore. The very nature of this platform no longer appeals to me. Java Enterprise Edition is so bureaucratic in that it requires so many configuration files, so much packaging, etc., etc., etc. that I have decided that I am going to get back into learning .NET and develop for Microsoft platforms. .NET may not be a perfect platform in its own right, but based on my experience with Java, and that of other Java developers I know who have worked with .NET, it beats the pants off of anything in the Java world.
So score one for the Evil Empire from Redmond.
Studying the basics of .NET programming for the first part of my entry-level .NET certification has given me a real appreciation for what this platform can do. It really strikes me as cleaner and more robust than Java in a lot of ways.
Have you used Spring in any of your Java apps? After starting to use it a few months ago, I can't imagine working without it (or a similar IoC + configuration + abstraction framework, although I don't think there's anything that offers as much as Spring). I'm amazed at how much easier it makes managing components and wiring them together, and it simplifies and automates just about every repetitive or verbose task I've ever done. Not to mention the aggregation of exception types which helps cut down on the catch blocks.
Of course, there is a Spring.NET, so you can get roughly the same thing for .NET, albeit with probably less features and cutting-edge coolness.
And as far as JSF -- I haven't used it, but I did take a look and it appears to be a drastic change. Unless it really has some great features that I don't know about, I see no reason to switch from straight JSTL.