JSF Flex Project - april fools comes late this year

It was in amazement that I read about the The JSF Flex Project on TheServerSide . I thought that this was someones idea of a bad joke, sadly it wasn’t. The author claims the project is for “developers who are unfamiliar with Adobe Flex can be completely abstracted from its technology and focus in linking the application’s data to legacy information”.

Hold up just a god damn minute here. First of all JSF probably is the framework with the highest learning curve I have ever laid my hands on. Because it is based ideas from all the horrible UI frameworks (AWT, Swing, etc) it is of course over engineered, utterly complex and not very well suited for UI development . The only reason people use JSF is because software vendors (IBM, Sun, BEA, etc) keeps showing it down their throat.

Secondly Flex is dead simple. If you are not able to learn to create a Flex application in one week you should probably change profession. I have personally experienced this with several Java developers who have learned Flex in one week without any prior knowledge of Flex or UI programming.

Anyone with their brain plugged in when reading about a framework and see the phrase “completely abstracted from its technology” know that it is absolute nonsense. If you think for one second that you can write Java code and not have a need to understand the technology it abstracts you should, once again, change your profession.  If you actualy belive the above statement you should read Joel Spolsky’s article The Law Of Leaky Abstraction.

What is depressing is that the people behind the JSF Flex Project probably have spent time on this utterly stoopid project.  I am sorry that you have wasted time on this and I am sorry that I have to tell you that you have wasted your time.

September 9th, 2008 | Flex

4 comments

@Alessandro: this post was indeed arrogant and you are entitled to be somewhat offended.

I wrote it in this way because too many software developers do not dare to “call bullshit” when some new framework comes along. Instead they try to see positive things in even the most useless piece of technology and end up just wasting time.
I call bullshit on this one and I hope that prevents people from wasting their time.

Comment by leftieFriele — September 10, 2008 @ 8:03 am

Personally I wish JSF would be just dead. Overbloated, overcomplicated piece of crap that doesn’t even have notion of conversation

Comment by bo — September 10, 2008 @ 5:18 am

I instead quote another sentence: “What is depressing is that the people behind the JSF Flex Project probably have spent time on this utterly stoopid project.”

The term “utterly stoopid” is indeed rather annoying. If you do not need it, don’t use it. If you cannot find a reason for using it, it does not mean there don’t exist. Your arrogance is instead quite clear.

Shall I need a Flex consultant, I know where NOT to look for. This is the best counter-advertisement you can make of yourself.

P.S.: I am in no way involved with such project.

Comment by Alessandro — September 9, 2008 @ 9:06 pm

“Hold up just a god damn minute here. First of all JSF probably is the framework with the highest learning curve I have ever laid my hands on.”

“… framework and see the phrase ‘completely abstracted from its technology’ know that it is absolute nonsense.”

Agree! Nice post.

Comment by Richard Hallgren — September 9, 2008 @ 4:00 pm


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