The last time I did any serious (or semi-serious) work in Java was in 2006. I used J2EE 5.0, which was the current version at the time, to demonstrate how we could migrate our enterprise web app package from spaghetti C++ to a more soundly architected framework in which most of the low-level work was done for us. I used Jetty as a servlet container for the demo because it was lightweight and easy to get going in a dev environment, although there were other options (most notably Tomcat). That was a long time ago and many versions away. I went into full-time LAMP work with Modern Perl and became a full-stack web developer.

My current circumstances have encouraged me to revisit Java. Firstly, I have some experience with it. I started by going through the Java practice challenges on HackerRank. I'm pleased with how easily it all comes back to me. I guess programming is like riding a bike. I'm using Java for all the online coding assessments as I look for work (except for the Perl positions). And I'm putting together a Java version of a TicTacToe app.

This has inspired some thoughts on the current Java ecosystem… and how it compares to the Modern Perl ecosystem.