Some good points, and some others I’d like to question.

First: “I don’t really care what’s in the 3 spec, it’s irrelevant to what I do.”

If you don’t know what something is, how can you determine its value? You’re not alone with this mindset; many have written off EJB long ago. My opinion is that you don’t know what you’re missing as ignorance is bliss.

“…referring to me as a spring-a-ling sets the wrong tone. A little humility…”

Let’s not pretend I’m bound to journalistic neutrality. This is all theatre. After all, you were annoyed enough to engage me in some meaningful discussions, so let’s call this a win for us both.

With that stuff out of the way, let’s get to the meatier issues.

“I personally don’t see the need for more than what Tomcat provides”

You might be missing out. Tomcat will handle the request/response model, which to me is all plumbing. It provides a mechanism to listen to users and give ‘em back something. What I love about full JEE is that you get equipped with the tools to write *business logic*, and a bunch of the technical nitty-gritty is done for you. Once you commit to a Tomcat-only design, it’s easy for concerns to get tangled, violating the principles of layered architecture that became popular a few years back. Now we look at fighting layerism in a different way – not by mixing all sorts of code together, but by providing a cohesive way for them to integrate. You’ll see fine examples of this within Seam and the upcoming Web Beans specification.

“Value add doesn’t mean rectifying 3 years later the complexity that shouldn’t have been there in the first place”

JBoss historically has been a vendor of standards-based technology. By nature, specifications are slower to evolve than the bleeding edge. To counter this, we’ve been offering (functional) preview releases of EJB3 for years, as well as innovative frameworks and libraries which stand aside from our Application Server. Additionally it’s the investment that JBoss makes into thought leadership within the JCP which speaks volumes of our dedication to the community to improve the nature of the standard.

“Which group am I more likely to continue working with, one that’s been right for over 3 years…”

I assume you mean Spring here.

Spring’s been right about a *lot* of things. I believe I give them full credit, cited with specific examples, above. And JBoss has also been correct by steering standards towards ways we believe enable the best development experience.

My qualms are not with any technical merits of the Spring Framework; I’m upset that the marketing theme continues to be knocking EJB with claims that are no longer true.

S,
ALR

> Or maybe I’m being unkind. After all, if the community was
> aware that every single bullet in the Spring mission
> statement[12] was addressed by a specification and backed by a
> series of compliant implementations, they’d have no
> business left.

Wow, you couldn’t be more wrong on that.. Which group am I more likely to continue working with, one that’s been right for over 3 years, understands simplicity and continues to produce a technology I use daily.

Or a group that’s 3 years late to the party who’s behind a standard that was worse than irrelevant because following it caused untold wasted hours on needless complexity.

Which group would you trust?

Honestly, we’re only using JBOSS because it has a commercial support. I personally don’t see the need for more than what Tomcat provides. And if you want to convince me that you’ve got a something worthwhile to look at, referring to me as a spring-a-ling sets the wrong tone. A little humility and making a case that you’ve produced something that has a value add, would be a good first step. And value add doesn’t mean rectifying 3 years later the complexity that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Spring doesn’t suck. I’m upset with SS incorrect vilification of specifications that we at JBoss have worked so hard to improve.

S,
ALR

It speaks for itself doesn’t it….All statistics and lies

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=spring%20java%2Cejb%20java%2Cj2ee%20java&cmpt=q

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java+ejb%2C+java+spring&l=

btw, I’m pro EJB.