This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Obie Fernandez. Original Post: SEAM Aims For Ruby on Rails Simplicity in Java Feed Title: Obie On Rails (Has It Been 9 Years Already?) Feed URL: http://jroller.com/obie/feed/entries/rss Feed Description: Obie Fernandez talks about life as a technologist, mostly as ramblings about software development and consulting. Nowadays it's pretty much all about Ruby and Ruby on Rails. Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Obie Fernandez Latest Posts From Obie On Rails (Has It Been 9 Years Already?)

Gavin and I have had many a long discussion about Java vs. Rails development lately, so I had to chuckle to myself as I read the following comment he made about his latest project, Jboss Seam (italics mine):

One of the (several) goals of Seam is to bring Ruby On Rails style productivity to the Java EE platform, which means we had to be incredibly economical with "framework" constructs. The idea of the programming model in Seam is that you don't have create any "extra things" to make your frameworks happy. You express your business model in entity beans, application logic in session beans, and then you're able to bind those directly to the JSP/Facelets page. Any extra layering or patterns are up to you, Seam doesn't force that on you.

Complexity is the opposite of what Seam is about :-)

(And no, it most certainly doesn't need tools!)

First of all, Gavin has worked his ass off on Seam, so I have to give him due props. He's shown me some application code and yes, there is a pronounced emphasis on simplicity -- a fresh step in the right direction. As for extra layering or patterns, Seam might not force them on you, but given Java programmers awful propensity to framework building, let's hope it makes it super-painful too. Then it might have a chance of provoking Rails-style productivity.