I've officially decided that JSTL is one of the worst things to ever happen to mankind

[Ivan Jouikov <iv...@comcast.net>]

After getting convinced to try JSTL, I learned the following things:
 
1.	JSTL and EL are inefficient.  Tests on similar pages clearly showed that.  (compare - ${name} with <%=name%>, run in a loop 10000 times, you’ll see the difference)
2.	JSTL is cumbersome – someone told me once that the reason they use JSTL is because their designers are scared of <%=%> code, but they have no problem throwing around XML statements.  Well, what’s my advice to him: hire new designers, and fire your high school students.  On one hand, yeah ${parameter.name} is very nice relatively to <%=request.getParameter(“name”)%>.  But after playing around with JSTLs u’ll see what I mean.  Also, when your designers screwes up with the logical structure of your web-site cuz he thought he could just “throw around” tags, you’ll think twice.  Which brings me to the next point…
3.	XML is for data flow, not for logic.  Whoever the hell thought of tags like <c:if> and <c:choose> should be murdered in the worst way possible.  With JSTL’s exporting and importing variables, and all the logical statements and loops, the whole idea of XML gets destroyed.
4.	EL encourages sloppy syntax.  It doesn’t even have data types (well it has on the bottom level, but not on the surface).  Remember JavaScript?  Did you know that at first, it was supposed to be server-side scripting language?  You know the reason it didn’t make it (one of the major ones)?  Because of its sloppy syntax and the amount of errors it caused.  Why bring it back?
5.	Server-side content and client-side content should be separated.  When everything looks like HTML (in some way), it’s hard to tell what actually gets processed, and what gets sent to the client as static (if you have all-nighters, you’ll understand).
6.	JSTL is time-consuming.  The whole idea of JSTL was to speed up the process.  Not only is it less efficient than embedding code the normal way, but it also takes you forever to make something new with it.  Don’t believe me?  Just try it.
7.	The only reason JSTL was made is so that guys at Apache could write some stupid book explaining its hella complicated syntax, and charge people $50 for it.  See, it’s just like the C++ story.  Why was C++ invented?  To give programmers jobs.  No other reason whatsoever, C does whatever C++ does just as good, and better.  So I am not sure if JSTL is a step to having “advanced” developers who get paid more because they took time to learn retarded JSTL syntax and EL, or is it just Apache’s developers’ way of making money (and I am surre O’reilly and the bros are thankful too).
 
Point of this message:  DO NOT USE JSTL OR EL.  You’ll regret it.  I did.
 
 
   _____  


Best Regards,

Ivan V. Jouikov
(206) 228-6670
HYPERLINK "http://www.ablogic.net/"
 

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