Java has been used most of the time for learning the various concepts of Object Oriented Programming and concepts. Majority of us also knows that Java is widely used for the creation of Desktop Based Applications. Most of us also knows that the applications that has been built using Java are very boring and have very traditional look and user experience. But many of us do not know that most of the applications that we use daily has been developed using Java. These applications includes Google Drive, Google Docs and other Google Related Applications.
Okay! So we we need Java in this world of JavaScript and all it's relative? First of all I am going to describe why we need Java to Build the Enterprise Level Web applications and which factors makes the Java standout of modern JavaScript Frameworks.
Why should we use Java to Build Big Web Applications?
There are a couple of factors related to this questions including Security, Better Authentication, Better Data Management, Scalability and Development Cost.
Scalability
Now what is meant by the Scalability? I would try to explain this term as simply as possible so that you do not feel bored and give up reading this article.
Let's say that there is an application that has been built for the 500 users simultaneously, but at some stage the number of users increased to the 2000 users simultaneously, then how do you think your application will perform?
If you are using Java to develop Web Applications and Projects, then you do not need to worry about this question, because Java provides an excellent way to handle this problem by the means of Scalability.
Now one can ask that how we can write Scalable applications in Java, and the answer of this question is very simple and that answer is by writing better code and how we can write better code is an other discussion and again if went deep into the aspects of writing better code then we will deviate from our discussion, so for time being I will not discuss this matter.
Development Cost
We all know that JavaScript frameworks are released on daily basis and old JavaScript libraries are discarded. So now here a very important question raises and that question is What will happen if the library that has been used in the project gets deprecated or deleted or the new version of that library gets available?
It is quite possible that this deprecation will allow your project or web application not to work properly or some features of your web application stop working.
This can cause to spend a lot of time to update your libraries which means that the hiring of new developers and spending new amount of time and money. So this will automatically increase the development and maintenance cost of the project.
In case of Java, the libraries are built for a long term support and the production team does not have to worry anything about the deprecation of certain libraries. Yes, sometimes the libraries gets deprecated but that happens after some years.
Security
How Java is better in security than the other programming languages and frameworks. The simplest answer to this question is that Java allows the developer to write the SQL injection and other vulnerability proof code with the help of builtin libraries. These libraries are super simple to implement and requires less use cases to worry about.
So these were some aspects that made Java a legacy programming language for many legacy projects. Now we come to one more important point which is How to build the Web Applications using Java? What are frameworks and tools provided by the Java to build the Web Applications? So without a further do let's get to these points.
Java Web Development Frameworks
There are many Java related web frameworks available but here we are going to talk about the most common ones and easy to work with.
JSP and Servlets
This is one of the most basic tools built on Java to make the web applications. This tools is very old and not being used to built applications today. But many important and effective applications have been built using JSP and Servlets.
Spring Framework
The important and influence Java framework is Spring Framework. Spring Framework is a very big framework that contains different parts and I will talk about some of the parts here in this article.
Spring MVC
Spring MVC is the Java framework based on the Model, View and Controller style. This allows to write web-applications, Restful Back-End and a Full Fledged applications using Hibernate as ORM that can be transferred into any other Database. It is very easy to get started with Spring MVC.
Spring Boot
Spring Boot is the most important aspect of the Spring Framework. Spring boot come with a Built-in server and tools to provide great facilities to developer to develop and excellent and large scale applications. It is very easy to get started with the Spring Boot application. You just need to visit the Spring Starter web-page and select libraries according to your need and you can get started right away.
Thymleaf
Theymleaf is also a very interesting tool provided by the Java to build applications. The most fun thing about Thymleaf is that allows to work with Modern CSS frameworks very effectively for the modern design purposes. It also decreases the complexity of Model to View communication as well.
Hibernate
In order to understand what is Hibernate we have to understand what is ORM. Object Relational Mapping is the Mapping of Entities to the Databases. In very simple words we can say that we make a class of and then we call some methods on the object of that class and the object is saved in the database as row.
Hibernate provided excellent functionality for ORM in the Java Environment. It is very easy to use and it also decreases the development cose to a great extent. But sometimes it creates the Bottleneck regarding the performance.
Final Words
Java has ruled the early 21st century, and this is the time of JavaScript and Machine Learning but we cannot deny the importance of Legacy Programming Languages. When the point of Performance and Reliability comes into the mind then Legacy Programming Languages comes into mind and we cannot deny the importance of these applications.
Oldest comments (17)
Is Java dying? Do big companies like Google or Facebook prefer to use Java as a backend in 2021? Btw nice article.
Java will never Die as this is the base of the big enterprise level applications and projects, google has used java fro big data analytics and platform building and also facebook has used PHP to build their various platforms so these languages will not die.
Cool. Thanks man.
Although Node and Go are getting a lot of traction, I wouldn't call Java a legacy just yet. Spring Boot REST servers are my top choice among everything else for backend, because of Spring mostly: extremely stable and battle-tested, its facilities ultimately compensate for Java's verbosity.
I just can't think the same of Spring MVC and Thymeleaf though: going full JAMStack makes development much faster (and also pleasant) than having to rebuild a whole application just to be able to see that css change applying. Also, by doing that you are already separating your application in at least two parts - front and back - being then a small step ahead on modularity.
As for Hibernate, well ... just check my profile for a post about it if you have the time to listen to me whine. ;)
Yes, I totally agree with you on these points as Spring MVC and Thymeleaf has been a kind of old fashioned but there are some projects which have been made using these frameworks and they are working fine to the time.
And I will definitely checkout your profile for the Hibernate topic :)
I always hated hibernate. Why is anyone afraid of SQL? First hibernate said "you won't have to write sql". Then they said "We invented hibernate sql". Really?? There is no reason to be afraid of SQL. It works pretty darn well. If you are worried about managing transactions, you can do that all with annotations in Spring now.
To Be Very Honest, I Love to Write Queries Manually, But, In Simple words, Hibernate is there to easily understand the Relationships and Entities, and It also supports the thing called one thing for everywhere kind of concept as well. This is why the ORMS are in much demand these days.
My main reason to stick to SQL is code transformation.
I mean, suppose that I write backend using PHP + Laravel and MySQL. When someday I have to use ASP.net or Node, then I need to rewrite my database related code using different ORM provided by these stacks.
Whereas, with T-SQL, I can just use the same SQL code in the new backend stack.
Although I am currently using Laravel, I don't use its Eloquent ORM for complex computation, especially when stored procedures seem to be the only solution.
You have explained that in a very nice and attractive way. Thank you for that.
I recently learned Node and it is a brittle pile of overcomplicated crap chained to a single threaded runtime engine. This terrible idea will not be around in 10 years, I guarantee it.
Actually, I am currently working on a Large Scale Project and I have selected Node for that Project, Yet Node is very fast but it has code scattered everywhere. And it is also a different and abstract architecture that makes it a kind of crappy.
The more I learn about Node, the worse it gets. It seems that library versioning is a real pain point for everyone, and Lerna doesn't seem to make things much better. Here is an example of how developers have to manually enforce patterns on their team just to keep things from getting out of control jackcuthbert.dev/blog/managing-a-m.... This kind of thing is so straight forward in java and maven that no one even thinks about it.
On an even more basic level developers always wonder about things like, should I check in my lock file to git, or should I delete my lockfile when I build. Is there a lockfile in a sub folder that I don't know about. Yuck!
All of our enterprise apps have been built in Java. You just can't beat it for runtime performance, ease of use, development productivity, type safety (for robust apps!), the JVM and, of course, its all conquering ecosystem.
Our stack looks like this:
UI: Wicket - JavaScript powered/AJAX capable components but all driven from Java - no ugly JavaScript to write...ever! HTML layouts for pages, panels and components are specified with stock standard, legal HTML markup which can be edited by any HTML editor.
ORM: DataNucleus (alternative to Hibernate) - for speed and more transparent persistence (i.e. not having to adjust your object model or code to cater to limitations/nuances of the ORM).
Thank you for that valuable addition.
JSP is still the most common view used with Spring MVC and everywhere I have worked is still heavily used. The reason for its popularity is that it is so intuitive to use and performs very well. I could teach 14 year olds to write JSP. It's that simple. Like a wise man once said, the most brilliant solutions are the most simple ones.
The easy to memorise and easy to grasp concepts of Java and related frameworks makes it favourite for many classical framework and classical programmers.
Classical ? I have not tasted classical ASP when it gained success in its era alongside JSP and PHP.