Why Java Makes Me Tremble In My Boots

Let me begin by saying that I have not spent a lot of time in Java.  I learned it in college (some 12 years ago) and I’ve used it sparingly throughout my development career.  To date I’ve never done a full project using only Java.  And ironically, one of the main reasons I haven’t is I don’t know where to start…

 On a regular basis I typically use either C# or PHP.  At my current employment, C# seems to be the day-to-day; however, when we have a small project or I have a small project on my own, I’ll use PHP.  It’s quick (in terms of development) and nimble (it terms of being run-time interpreted) so it lets me cheat my way through simple projects.

Now, the reason Java development scares me is two-fold:

• What framework should I use?
• What HTTP server should I use?

I probably only know a handful of Java developers and I’ve asked each of them both of these questions.  Guess what, I get very different answers from each of them.

Again, ironically, it’s not that this is a bad thing – in reality it’s a really good thing as I’m not limited to what I choose.  It’s just a very daunting first step!

When I’m using PHP, over the past 5 years, this does seem to be a similar situation with frameworks.  MVC frameworks are a dime a dozen.  The major difference here is I chose a framework a long time ago before this massive in fluctuation and haven’t really detoured since.

C# does not seem to have this issue at all.  There are very few choices – yet to be determined if this is good or bad J

The second issue – the HTTP server – seems to be strictly a Java issue.  In PHP I have very minimum choices of what can serve up my PHP pages: Apache, Nginx, or IIS – excluding some recent custom built solutions here…

C# is even more limited: IIS – unless we’re exploring something like Mono to run it on (L)Unix – which I have never personally done.

At the end of the day, a language to me is just a language.  Syntax is slightly different of course between them, but definitely not a hurdle to switch.  The major hurdle is once you choose a language, the right underlying technology becomes the most important thing – and this is where I struggle when it comes to Java – I just don’t know…