Project based on J2EE

Question

Would you start J2EE project nowadays if you have other alternatives?
UPDATE: I think little clarification is needed: Is it worth investing in J2EE if practically everything it claims to offer can be achieved by using other technologies? To be honest, J2EE scares me by its monstrosity and I foresee substantial maintenance and/or evolution costs.

Answer 1

Sure, but it would depend on the project. I still think J2EE is great for large scale distributed, transactional business type apps. I think the alternatives are certainly closing in on it though.

Answer 2

No, I would not start a new J2EE project if I had alternatives.

Answer 3

No, never.

Answer 4

You need to use the right tool for the job.

I wouldn't consider Java anything for a web based project but if you need to build applications for use in a mixed OS environment in an enterprise setting, that is the world where J2EE shines. This is very rare though.

If you are Windows only (servers and desktops), I think you would be hard pressed to make a case against .Net.

If you are in a Mac or *nix only environment then there are better alternatives there as well.

Answer 5

Alternatives to what aspect or J2EE?

I would use J2EE today for a backend if I thought I might ever need clustering, for example.

But you really need to ask the question with more detail, and here's why - let's look at the profiles of the people responding to you to see what the preconceptions at work in responses are:

Eric we don't know much about yet but he does use Visual Studio.

Hank is a Java guy moving toward python.

Matt is a C#/Ruby guy, seemingly with not a lot (any?) Java exposure.

Rob looks like mainly an IIS / SQL guy.

(in the interest of full disclosure, from my profile you'd think I was only an iPhone developer but did about fifteen years of Java work including J2EE before that)

So take advice from anyone with a grain of salt, if you ask a question like that you have to be specific so you can get answers with solid reasons behind them... otherwise you only get people's feelings about J2EE. And that includes myself, having worked with it I find it acceptable to use but there really may be better options for aspects that are important to you I have not worked with yet.

Answer 6

Yes. I currently am starting a new J2EE web project. We've looked at several other options and it appears to be the best fit for what we're doing. We can reuse code easily from existing J2SE projects, it does all the webby stuff we need, etc.

The big problem I've found with J2EE is not the actual size of it, but the lack of good documentation and examples. Everything I run across is either acronym soup and/or leaves out the necessary detail to actually get something running. So, if you're trying to learn it via reading the web, you're going to get frustrated. It really takes someone sitting down with you for a couple hours and pointing things out. Then it's not bad at all.