[OT] Re: Is Spring worth it?

[Dave Newton <ne...@yahoo.com>]

johnrock wrote:
> from what I have studied so far it just looks like Spring 
 > introduces twice as much complexity to solve the standard
> types of problems.

Can you provide an example of this? I haven't run into much that Spring 
makes *more* complicated. This perception may also be affected by what 
exactly you're using Spring to do, and how you're doing it.

For example, DI/IoC can be handled by much lighter-weight frameworks. 
Struts 2 uses a version for its internal DI. The Spring plugin, however, 
makes DI downright trivial to implement, and in testing-heavy shops DI 
can be a pretty big win.

> And, the cross cutting concerns that you eliminate are replaced
 > by Spring code which seems to hide logic and make things more
> obfuscated.  

Again, I'd need to see some examples--this hasn't been my experience.

 > Even the JDBC and transaction management seem much simpler and
> clearer to do with straight JDBC.

Transaction management is one place where AOP in general is a great 
saver of cognitive overhead. As a trivial example, consider a package of 
service classes. Making them transactional is a matter of a half-dozen 
lines of Spring configuration (maybe less with Spring annotations; I 
haven't used them much).

 > I am dying to hear at least one real world example that makes me
 > say: "oh yeah? that is awesome!"

We're dealing with Java here. Those moments are few and far between.

Appreciating what Spring provides may be one of those things like Lisp 
macros: until they're actually used in real-life situations it can be 
difficult to convey their value.

Dave


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