Comment by Atul Sharma on "Why is Java not so prevalent among startups?"

Startups want to build the product with minimum efforts and as fast as possible, and surely java is not built for that.

You can write a working prototype of same project with Node and MongoDb in 7 days while same can take more than 15 days is build with Java and Postgre.

Language expertise does matter but, till some extent. Languages like Node JS eliminates a lot of Boilerplate (Or Not so necessary) code required for JAVA applications (POJO's, Un-necessary class declaration ) which requires a lot of time and can reduce development time considerably.

For instance : Setting up a Spring project from scratch can take much more time then setting up a Node or PHP project.

I would agree with you if you are talking about most Java frameworks. However people think that is the only way to program in Java. Java has plenty of low level libraries as well where you can throw code together very quickly. I built my own set of common tools I can throw prototypes together in a weekend depending on what it needs.

For example take undertow.io and any HTML templating library and you can have a server side rendered app in the same speed as a node with express app. However the Java world loves our overly abstracted frameworks and MVC and so many terms it takes days to read the basics of any framework.

Bill O'Neil see the demo code itself.. to create a basic listener to respond. The same can be achieved in hardly 4 lines of code in node. Java is standard but, can't meet the pace of development of Node. Its strictly object oriented and follows standard while node is for beginners build and break things fast.

I'd disagree for a few reasons. Less code isn't always more productive. Debugging and maintaining code often takes a lot of time also even early on.

Two there are many new tools that can drastically speed up Java dev time. The example you are looking at is using pre Java 8 syntax. The same Java web server can be written in 3-4 lines matching up with node see stubbornjava.com/guides/embedded-java-web-server (disclaimer this is my site). If you look at some of the routing examples it even looks like a node web server. This web server has very little overhead also and starts immediately unlike large frameworks.

Now you will need to do more stuff manually but Java has plenty of libraries for anything you could need. A little glue code and you are good to go even without a framework.

Want a database? Grab flywaydb.org add some tables to a migration script. Next grab jooq.org and its code generator you now have java objects and simple crud for all tables without doing anything. Add some simple glue code and you have a REST server in no time.

Now we have a lightweight java web server that starts up immediately no 30+ second loading times like some beast frameworks. We didn't write any sql but it works already based on our schema. If you are impatient like me and don't even want to start / stop the sever every time you make changes head over to zeroturnaround.com/software/jrebel and add the plugin to your IDE. Now 90% of changes to the code are hot loaded on the fly in the running web server. No stopping just straight up dev time (Not all changes can be hot loaded but its pretty damn good).

Node might be easier to pick up and learn from nothing but if you are an experienced Java dev you wont be left behind if you use modern tools. Hopefully startups aren't only hiring junior devs who know very little.

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