Friday, February 22, 2008

Spring MVC easy way

Writing web applications using Spring MVC has never been easier, now that we have annotated controllers in Spring 2.5. Basically, it all boils down to just couple of things, from defining the viewResolver bean and the required XML configuration to scan for annotated based controllers to adding an annotation to (any) method in your controller class, just like this:
@RequestMapping(value="/url")
public ModelMap method()

Of course, there are few required beans you need to define for all that magic to work (shown in the Spring Framework documentation online) but I find that very acceptable and a big plus (showing how Spring is very flexible).

Some people might argue that the (now) old-fashioned way of defining the links the controllers respond to via urlMapping bean (SimpleUrlHandlerMapping) is similar to routes in Rails where everything (in regards to URL requests) is in one place. Then again, how many times are you going to change the URL locations and where does it look to be more natural - especially when you basically do all your work within the controller.

Similarly, this is how TurboGears (a web framework for my favorite language, python) handles request mappings (with a twist), where the name of the method in the controller declares the request mapping. That can be easily achieved with Spring MVC annotated controllers, too.

All this ease-of-use for writing web applications plus all the benefits of the Spring Framework - there's no need to switch to another framework, developers used to work with Spring can leverage all their knowledge and still be in the front lines, especially in regards to developing web applications.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Jython development gaining momentum

Jython developers gathered last Sunday in San Francisco and held a sprint to work on the next major release. This will bring Jython implementation of Python on par with the CPython implementation, which is now version 2.5.1 (with a v2.5.2 release candidate 1 released to public testing just few days ago). The San Francisco Sprint focused on the Roadmap list for the Jython 2.5.

There is not much information to work with in regards to what is the outcome to the Sprint, but I suppose a lot of good work came out of it. Hopefully we will see a stable release soon. With Groovy and JRuby already having a steady (and growing) number of followers, Jython needs a jolt.

Monday, February 4, 2008

Technical evangelist?!

What is up with technical people and the urge to have titles? Especially strange ones.. I have been reading a lot lately about Flex and AIR, technologies for developing rich internet applications, mainly for two reasons - first and foremost, it's very interesting technology and second, it might come in handy at work. But I'm not going to talk about that just yet.
During my reading, I came across more than a few times with a a rather unusual title. Apparently, one of the guys behind Flex and AIR calls himself a technical evangelist. If we look up the definition of the term evangelist, we can find out various things:
  • Evangelism is the verbal proclaiming of the Christian Gospel or, by extension, any other form of preaching or proselytizing.
  • "To announce the good news", one who preaches the facts of the Gospel in order to win converts.
  • The traditional view of the evangelist is a bearer of the "Good News", proclaiming the gospel to the unbelieving world.
So, technical evangelist is doing what, exactly? Somebody who verbally proclaims technology? Isn't just pretty much everyone who works in the field an evangelist? We should stop calling ourselves bloggers and start using evangelist instead..
This is, in my honest opinion, the worst title I have ever heard in my life. Sounds ridiculous and I honestly don't believe how can anyone take it seriously. Rubbish.