• (cs) in reply to dhoffman

    dhoffman:

    I'm a bit tired of you IT snobs ranking on Access developers. Some of us code carefully, use best practices, and produce well running applications that work well for the users.

    Not every application has to be cutting edge, super tech and state of the art. Get a life and say something positive instead of making fun of something that isn't even relevant to this topic.

    Diebold uses Access as the database in their GEMS vote tallying system.

    This means you can change the results of an American election by diddling some tables via Access.

    This can be used for positive change, right?

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=diebold+gems+access if you don't believe me.

  • Ilya (unregistered)

    Your company is a WTF!!!!!!!!!!

  • Ilya (unregistered) in reply to Ilya

    god damn 2nd page of comments :(

     captcha: billgates

  • JD (unregistered) in reply to Null

    Anonymous:
    SQL Express is basically a cut down of SQL Server 2005 (In the same way that MSDE was a cut down of SQL 2000)

    No Kidding?!?!  My point was that MS Access has always been a lightweight tool for quickly deploying working database applications to small groups of users.  Most MS Access databases being deployed now are probably inherited from existing systems.  SQL Express, or any cheap/lightweight MS database alternative has not existed for very long.  Not to mention that just like the various inconsistent/incompatible flavors of CE that keep coming out, some departments are leery of adopting the latest flavor of SQL Sever brought out by MS simply because they can't count on MS supporting it long-term.

    Who cares.. lets get on to bashing the VFP guys now...  (Oh crap, I am a VFP guy too!) 

  • (cs) in reply to Brian

    Anonymous:
    ...there is the issue that in Java you're allowed a maximum of 64K characters inside of a try/catch block. 

    I don't even want to know how one discovers this... 

  • Darin (unregistered) in reply to E.thermal
    Anonymous:

    ok but I find it hard to believe that their entire development staff "only" knew perl.  How does one only know perl?  To only know perl means you started your development learning with perl and only used perl after that?

    Probably because no one bothered asking the developers what languages they know.  Most companies, when they want to make a change in direction, will always look outside the company.  They don't sift through dusty resumes stuck on file and find out if they have someone competent who can do the work.  They also don't seem to bother to find out if any of the existing staff would at least be worthwhile in interviewing the prospective superstar paradigm breaker candidate.

    Most good programmers, and all great ones, can learn a new language quickly; especially something like the Java of that time frame (back when it was still a language and not a collection of libraries and acronyms to memorize). But a lot of companies don't know this.  A good programmer in Perl is a good programmer period.  It's not an easy language to learn well and learn all the ins and outs of.  A "learn Perl in 21 days" person won't be so great.  But it's not hard to find out which of the staff do a great job, comment the code, solve the impossible problems in short order, train the other developers, etc.

    (A friend of mine had an entry level job in a Q/A position for a medical device company a long time ago.  Most people in that group had CS degrees and knew how to program.  But when it came time to do a little programming work to create some utilities and automation within the group itself, the manager immediately went on a job hunt outside the company.  After all, common manager wisdom says that mere Q/A people don't know anything about programming.)

  • Dazed (unregistered) in reply to JD
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    It's not necessarily access developers that people are ranking on, but more Access itself as a product.  It's fine for a small db that nobody cares about, but once it starts getting used in production, there is no excuse to go to something like SQL Express.   (Which is free btw, while access is not).

    Not everything was designed and deployed yesterday.  MS Access has been around for ages, and SQL Express has not.  SQL Express may be free, but in a business environment where every user has all of the MS Office products installed on their machine by default, MS Access is configuration free - nobody has to think (even for a second) about deploying a MS Access project properly.  If you have 5,6,7 year old MS Access databases being utilized by small workgroups, and it works fine, why would want to waste valuable development resources to switch over to SQL Express?

    Precisely. When one is talking about small departmental applications, one can typically have an Access application up and running in less time than it takes the IT department to agree to start writing the specification for a "serious" application. In one case I had an Access application up and running in less time than it took the IT department to refuse to develop the application.

    Tools such as Access (and presumably FoxPro etc, which I haven't used) have a useful role in a layer under the heavyweight applications. Without them, you do not get professionally developed SQL Server / Oracle applications in their place. You get an impenetrable and unmaintainable mess of Excel sheets. Anyone who thinks that is an improvement: please raise your hand.

  • (cs) in reply to dhoffman
    dhoffman:
    Anonymous:
    dhoffman:
    Anonymous:

    MS-Access has a similar three-layer structure: the front-end, the back-end, and the caveman-sloping forehead of the "Access developer/architect" at the keyboard.

     I'm a bit tired of you IT snobs ranking on Access developers.  Some of us code carefully, use best practices, and produce well running applications that work well for the users.

     Not every application has to be cutting edge, super tech and state of the art.  Get a life and say something positive instead of making fun of something that isn't even relevant to this topic.

     

    It's not necessarily access developers that people are ranking on, but more Access itself as a product.  It's fine for a small db that nobody cares about, but once it starts getting used in production, there is no excuse to go to something like SQL Express.   (Which is free btw, while access is not).
     

     

    Well, then please omit the comments about the sloping foreheads.  Thank you.

     Sounds like someone woke up on the wrong side of the rock! :)

  • Tim (unregistered) in reply to E.thermal
    Anonymous:

    ok but I find it hard to believe that their entire development staff "only" knew perl.  How does one only know perl?  To only know perl means you started your development learning with perl and only used perl after that?  And to believe an entire development team was like this? If by team you mean one developer I would understand a little better but a whole team?

    shenanigans.   not the whole story just that the entire development team can only understand perl and that the entire applciation and all supporting applications was written in perl and this was suppose to be a viable company/product.

     

     

    I've known many developers who knew only Perl because no one would trust them to use another language. I just left a company with 7 Perl only programmers. One dabbled with PHP on his own time, and another dabbled with Java, but otherwise the rest only knew Perl. Most good programmers become ex-Perl programmers because they hate working with other Perl programmers.

    And you used shenanigans oddly. Perhaps you meant "fabrication"?

  • Tim (unregistered) in reply to Brian
    Anonymous:

    It's astonishing that 30 pages of code in a single method worked at all. Beyond the obvious ridiculousness of if such a long-running method, there is the issue that in Java you're allowed a maximum of 64K characters inside of a try/catch block.


     

    If you put it in a try/catch block how would you know if there was an error? Assuming he would probably use this try/catch block:
    try {
        ... 30 pages of code...
    } catch (Exception e) {}

  • Hopefully not seeing the obvious (unregistered) in reply to Volmarias
    Volmarias:
    Anonymous:

    Volmarias:
    This sounds kind of like my company. Except that our company doesn't have the abject failure in every corner that this company appeared to.

    Your company has all the symptoms of a cluster fuck-up, but hasn't yeat crashed and burned? Can't help wondering what's down the road for you...



    Well, our product is a java middleware, and it has basically 1 page. There are a few key differences.
    1) Our middleware actually is a middleware.
    2) We have a more effective method of determining what to show right now than ten thousand if then else statements
    2a) We're "one page" in the sense that its not a single JSP page, but that our middleware accepts one particular URL (sans GET/POST bits).
    3) Our company has been around for quite some time (think decades), and we seem to be doing pretty well. Trivial management annoyances aside, we all actually work pretty well.
    4) We have quite a few clients, and they stick around. They like our product over those of our competators, as well as our willingness to do what's necessary to accomodate them.

    Our stuff works, and it works well. The older, crustier bits of our software we're slowly rebuilding and phasing out with newer technologies. If you knew who we were, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't call us a WTF at all.

    I don't, and I didn't - merely following your original comment of "This sounds like our company" ("symptoms")... no offense intended

  • (cs) in reply to stubborn buffer
    Visual FoxPro has a similar three-layer structure: a thick client, a thin database layer, and a very thick barrier preventing any FoxPro users from learning new technologies.

    God, I love it. As it happens, I use a Visual FoxPro app almost every weekend of the year.  It works well.  I wouldn't call the developer a sloping forehead type, though.  It works very well for the 1-2 people that have to use it (stand-alone)

    And I constantly learn new technology, languages, methods.  But I nearly spewed my large cup of java when I read that. 

  • (cs) in reply to bullseye
    bullseye:

    Anonymous:
    ...there is the issue that in Java you're allowed a maximum of 64K characters inside of a try/catch block. 

    I don't even want to know how one discovers this... 

    Read the vm specs maybe? :) 

  • (cs) in reply to dhoffman

    dhoffman:
     I'm a bit tired of you IT snobs ranking on Access developers.  Some of us code carefully, use best practices, and produce well running applications that work well for the users.

    I believe that most reading this site believes that the mark of a good developer has nothing to do with the environment they use, but how they use it.  Having said that, you apparently are in the top 0.0005% of Access developers, of which many of us will never encounter.  I commend you if your work is indeed not WTF-worthy, but the stereotype definitely exists for a reason...

     

  • JD (unregistered) in reply to jimlangrunner
    jimlangrunner:
    Visual FoxPro has a similar three-layer structure: a thick client, a thin database layer, and a very thick barrier preventing any FoxPro users from learning new technologies.

    God, I love it. As it happens, I use a Visual FoxPro app almost every weekend of the year.  It works well.  I wouldn't call the developer a sloping forehead type, though.  It works very well for the 1-2 people that have to use it (stand-alone)

    And I've worked on VFP applications more complex than most PC application developers in my area have ever seen - scaling from single user to thousand user systems using a combination of VFP databases and SQL Server backends.  One recent VFP system I've worked on is utilized by tens of thousands of users, happens to be the leading software choice in its industry, and brings in tens of millions in revenue each year.  Just because it's not whatever nifty language you're learning this week, doesn't mean that it isn't powerful enough or scaleable enough to do the job well.

  • Scoldog (unregistered) in reply to emurphy

    Funnily enough, I was thinking of the quote from Casino

    "Problem was, <NAME> was a disaster. I mean, this guy could fuck up a cup of coffee."

    Strangely appropriate since we're talking about Java

  • (cs) in reply to Tim

    Anonymous:

    And you used shenanigans oddly. Perhaps you meant "fabrication"?

     

    "I call shenanigans!"

     

  • Sir Bollocks McFee (unregistered) in reply to It's a Feature

    Maybe he was Klingon... "Comments are for the weak"

  • (cs) in reply to emurphy

    It's 64K of compiled code, of course, not source code.

  • <3 VFP (unregistered) in reply to stubborn buffer
    Anonymous:

    Uh-oh, caveman angry!

    Actually I do Access "dev" every now and then, so it's all in good fun. Let me try this again:
    --
    Visual FoxPro has a similar three-layer structure: a thick client, a thin database layer, and a very thick barrier preventing any FoxPro users from learning new technologies.
    --

    See, that was even easier!

     Ah come on Foxpro is lovely! So nice to do scripting with. So so so much better than Access.

    Like anything, use the best tool you know how to use for the job... If you can make it work with Access, Foxpro, Cobol, Haskell, who cares, as long as it DOES work as it should and its maintainable.

  • (cs)

    It seems to be fashionable to horribly distort the meaning of "multi-tiered architecture."  I've heard all kinds of creative definitions of it in the last five years.  I've even heard one person swear it was defined by where the servers are physically located.

  • George (unregistered) in reply to emurphy
    emurphy:
    biziclop:

    As a Java developer I can't help but feel ashamed.

     

    When I was younger I used to honestly think that one of the advantages of Java is its relative complexity (as opposed to php), so it's almost impossible for a trained Java developer to be stupid. How stupid was I!

     

    Some people will manage to fuck up an iron ball if you give them enough time.

     

    ]
    I just spit out my drink laughing, omg.

  • (cs) in reply to Null

    Can we please stop comparing Access to Oracle and SQL Server ???  That is like comparing MS Word to Photoshop as image editors. 

    SQL Express (or SQL Server) can be used as a replacement for the JET database engine, not for MS Access.  MS Access is not a database engine, it is a desktop applications that uses JET as a database backend.  There's a heck of a lot more to MS Access than storing data (i.e., reports, forms, macros, VBA, etc). 

    Funny how many people have no clue about that and don't understand what the heck MS Access actually is.   Of course, that doesn't stop them from criticizing it .. which is a "Daily WTF" specialty, of course.

     

     

  • DBW (unregistered) in reply to Hopefully not seeing the obvious

    I am not sure I would classify this as a WTF, depending on the timeframe ... if it was a real Web 1.0 company, I have seen many a WTFs that beats this out, hands down .. be it a 1-pager, middleware, or n-tier architecture

    My favorite was being introduced to the the Webulater 400  ... or ...

    the single ColdFusion template for the presentation & about 100 .cfm's to <cfinclude> for the middle -- all connected to an Access .mdb <--- das-uber data tier!

     ... or ... the reverse, an entire 1000+ product catalog as 1000+ .html files!  So quick & easy to maintain.

    ... or ... the ultimate in ASP\VBS 1.0 dynamic-link-libraries ... the adovbs.inc, don't forget to ftp that file over to production & get a crane, it weighs a ton!

    We take many concepts for granted today that actually pushed the envelope in the mid-90s. 

    And for the MSAccess bashers .. there is still something elegant about a desktop application that can provide the DB engine, CRUD, GUI & reporting system in one package & allow some multi-user support if required  ... just ask the Mac guys who won't put Filemaker away (I knew I should have tried harder to convince those FM folks to get into a real RDMS, like 4th-Dimension back in the 80s)

     

  • Jimbo (unregistered) in reply to Brian
    Anonymous:

    It's astonishing that 30 pages of code in a single method worked at all. Beyond the obvious ridiculousness of if such a long-running method, there is the issue that in Java you're allowed a maximum of 64K characters inside of a try/catch block.


     

     

    I will soon have to work on a vb5 program that's got 60+ pages (size 10 times new roman) no comments and with over 2/3 of it copied directly from 'the legacy system' written all in GW Basic.  I'm inheriting this program from my boss who no longer wants to deal with it.  When the program was 'converted' to visual basic 5 oh so long ago i believe they took out the goto statements.  That being said, the lack of goto statements is the only redeeming part of the code.  This function is so large that it will not run in the environment thus leading to all changes to the code being compiled and put into production immediately with absolutely no testing.  Also i should mention that there is no error catching in the whole program.  And that it processes between 4 and 5 billion dollars in financial transactions a month.

     

    Go cry in your milk sissies.  I'm told that there's no time for needless things like declaring variables and error catching in the real world.

     

  • Jimbo (unregistered) in reply to Brian
    Anonymous:

    It's astonishing that 30 pages of code in a single method worked at all. Beyond the obvious ridiculousness of if such a long-running method, there is the issue that in Java you're allowed a maximum of 64K characters inside of a try/catch block.


     

     

    I will soon have to work on a vb5 program [edit: with a function named command1_click] that's got 60+ pages (size 10 times new roman) no comments and with over 2/3 of it copied directly from 'the legacy system' written all in GW Basic.  I'm inheriting this program from my boss who no longer wants to deal with it.  When the program was 'converted' to visual basic 5 oh so long ago i believe they took out the goto statements.  That being said, the lack of goto statements is the only redeeming part of the code.  This function is so large that it will not run in the environment thus leading to all changes to the code being compiled and put into production immediately with absolutely no testing.  Also i should mention that there is no error catching in the whole program.  And that it processes between 4 and 5 billion dollars in financial transactions a month.

     

    Go cry in your milk sissies.  I'm told that there's no time for needless things like declaring variables and error catching in the real world.

     

  • My Lord! (unregistered) in reply to RH
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    If he not use templates, his code will be horrible. But with templates, that can be a nice thing.

    I mean, YES, as most data-centered code on the oracle side. Bussiness logic on java, and templates for display. What is sooo wrong here? 

     

    In america, we have a little bit of general advice that goes something like this:  

    Every group of friends has one friend that nobody likes, but everybody tolerates for the sake of not rocking the boat.  If you don't know who that person is in your group, it's you.

    Of course, this can loosely be applied to technology.

    Every company has one WTF developer that the management just won't fire.  If you don't know who that person is, it's you.  If you don't get the joke, you're probably the source of the problem......

    I don't get it.  We don't have anyone like that where I work.  Everyone here is simply brillant!  (captcha = paula).

    return Universe.doEverythingConceivableInOneScript(godLikePowersEnabled); // File Not Found

     

  • FoxPro Dev (unregistered) in reply to stubborn buffer

    :(

  • Lummox (unregistered) in reply to FrostCat
    FrostCat:
    Anonymous:

    It's astonishing that 30 pages of code in a single method worked at all. Beyond the obvious ridiculousness of if such a long-running method, there is the issue that in Java you're allowed a maximum of 64K characters inside of a try/catch block.

    That kind of assumes, doesn't it, that the guy used try/catch blocks.

    I didn't know 'used' was a statically declared method in your post :P (Eclipse joke)

    I also just realized I've apparently written thousands of applications. 

     Captcha = quality 
     

  • meadandale (unregistered) in reply to stubborn buffer

    "Uh-oh, caveman angry!"

     I'm suddenly reminded of those Geico adds, "I'll have the roast duck with the mango salsa" ;-)
     

  • Papa Lazarou (unregistered) in reply to Jimbo
    Anonymous:

    I will soon have to work on a vb5 program that's got 60+ pages (size 10 times new roman) no comments and with over 2/3 of it copied directly from 'the legacy system' written all in GW Basic.  I'm inheriting this program from my boss who no longer wants to deal with it.  When the program was 'converted' to visual basic 5 oh so long ago i believe they took out the goto statements.  That being said, the lack of goto statements is the only redeeming part of the code.  This function is so large that it will not run in the environment thus leading to all changes to the code being compiled and put into production immediately with absolutely no testing.  Also i should mention that there is no error catching in the whole program.  And that it processes between 4 and 5 billion dollars in financial transactions a month.

     Aaah hahaha ha ha!  I knew there were others like me out there.

     Please can I come over when you think you've got it working and type 'Option Explicit' at the top.  YOU'RE MY WIFE NOW DAVE!

    </offtopic></again> 

  • cowpoke (unregistered) in reply to SomebodyElse
    SomebodyElse:

     

    Java has checked exceptions that have to be caught or the code won't compile.  Judging from the timeline, most exceptions were checked at this point.  Any JDBC coding must be done in try catch blocks because SQLExceptions and subclasses are checked. 

     

    Just declare the exception to be thrown, and you are done with it.

     

     

    Ah, "the buck stops...somewhere else" philosophy.  Great. 

  • (cs) in reply to emurphy

    Perhaps he wrote bug free JSP pages(errr, I'm sorry, applications) by wrapping each line in an arbitraty try/catch block(in the borg sense of term, read as LINE). That'd be classic.

  • (cs) in reply to meadandale
    Anonymous:

    "Uh-oh, caveman angry!"

     I'm suddenly reminded of those Geico adds, "I'll have the roast duck with the mango salsa" ;-)
     

     

    I think "Someone got up on the wrong side of the rock" was a reference to another ad in that series.

     

  • Enric Naval (unregistered) in reply to Lummox
    Anonymous:
    FrostCat:
    Anonymous:


    I also just realized I've apparently written thousands of applications. 



    Look, I made my 148th application!

    view.php?id=148

    Wow. I must, like, rule a lot /sarcasm. I can easily imagine someone as clueless as the WTF guy doing things like creating 148 static different HTML pages and claiming he made a 148 pages website.

    captcha = pizza!
  • W Sanders (unregistered)

    A JSP page can be its own application.

    Web 1.0 -> Web 1999, because that's when it died.

    Web 2.0 -> Web 2000, because that's where most web apps are stuck today, unless you have Google-type money.

     Anyway, three-tier architecture is sooo 1999. With web services, we can have 10, 100, 10-thousand-tier architectures. What's to stop us? BWAAA HAAA HAAA HAA!
     

  • (cs) in reply to kaamoss

    I was thinking more of ...

    public static void main(){
 try {doMyCoolThing();} catch {}
}

private static doMyCoolThing() throws Exception{
 // 30 pages of crap
 // Don't even go here
 ...
 // Here be dragons
 ...
}
  • dsfgsddsfgsdfgdsffg (unregistered) in reply to Bob Janova
    Bob Janova:
    I was thinking more of ... 
    public static void main(){
 try {doMyCoolThing();} catch {}
}

    private static doMyCoolThing() throws Exception{
// 30 pages of crap
// Don't even go here
...
// Here be dragons
...
}
    This happens more than you think.  Except un-refactor the doMyCoolThing method and just put it all into main.

  • GWild (unregistered) in reply to emurphy
    emurphy:
    biziclop:

    As a Java developer I can't help but feel ashamed.

     

    When I was younger I used to honestly think that one of the advantages of Java is its relative complexity (as opposed to php), so it's almost impossible for a trained Java developer to be stupid. How stupid was I!

     

    Some people will manage to fuck up an iron ball if you give them enough time.

     

     

    fuck up an Iron ball...    LMAO!

    I'm SURE I work with this person...

     

  • (cs)

    What blows my mind is the stories of programmers who defend uncommented code. Usually the reason is "they'll just get out of sync" (only because you don't update them, F-wit). Or you're just supposed to trust them that the code does what it's supposed to do, whatever that is (who are you... Jesus?). Or "the code's self-documenting" (sure, I'll show it a programmer who has been at this as long as you have and see if he agrees).

     

  • Brian (unregistered) in reply to bullseye

    You discover it by having a big complex Spring/JSTL JSP template with a lot of HTML formatting, <spring:bind> and other JSTL tags in it and then try to deploy it on a Sun ONE 6.1 server. Sun ONE uses what appears to be an old and naive implementation of the Apache Jasper compiler. While the Jasper2 compiler in Tomcat 5 turns the JSTL tags into resusable methods, the older Jasper compiler emits all of the statements into a single try/catch inside of a single method. Bascially you end up with an unbelievable amount of code within a single method.

     The only way to get it to work is to break the JSP into sub-JSPs and include them with <jsp:include/>. It's a WTF in and of itself.

  • (cs) in reply to Hopefully not seeing the obvious
    Anonymous:
    Volmarias:
    Anonymous:

    Volmarias:
    This sounds kind of like my company. Except that our company doesn't have the abject failure in every corner that this company appeared to.

    Your company has all the symptoms of a cluster fuck-up, but hasn't yeat crashed and burned? Can't help wondering what's down the road for you...



    Well, our product is a java middleware, and it has basically 1 page. There are a few key differences.
    1) Our middleware actually is a middleware.
    2) We have a more effective method of determining what to show right now than ten thousand if then else statements
    2a) We're "one page" in the sense that its not a single JSP page, but that our middleware accepts one particular URL (sans GET/POST bits).
    3) Our company has been around for quite some time (think decades), and we seem to be doing pretty well. Trivial management annoyances aside, we all actually work pretty well.
    4) We have quite a few clients, and they stick around. They like our product over those of our competators, as well as our willingness to do what's necessary to accomodate them.

    Our stuff works, and it works well. The older, crustier bits of our software we're slowly rebuilding and phasing out with newer technologies. If you knew who we were, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't call us a WTF at all.

    I don't, and I didn't - merely following your original comment of "This sounds like our company" ("symptoms")... no offense intended



    You showed me your bold, I'll show you mine.
  • rob_squared (unregistered) in reply to Brian
    Anonymous:

    It's astonishing that 30 pages of code in a single method worked at all. Beyond the obvious ridiculousness of if such a long-running method, there is the issue that in Java you're allowed a maximum of 64K characters inside of a try/catch block.


     

     

    Yeah, there really should be a moment in everyone's head when they're trying to jam A into B and its not fitting where they should think, "gee, maybe B wasn't designed to hold A".

     I bet you anything that he ran up against this limit no less than 10 times before finding a way around it.
     

  • PHP Coder (unregistered) in reply to biziclop
    biziclop:

    As a Java developer I can't help but feel ashamed.

     

    When I was younger I used to honestly think that one of the advantages of Java is its relative complexity (as opposed to php), so it's almost impossible for a trained Java developer to be stupid. How stupid was I!

    If that was true, then we would never have to read these 2 lines of C code, becase C is complicated so only pros must use it! But I have read this more than once:

    char* string = null;

    strcpy( string, "My string" );

     //OMG WHY IS THIS CRASHING??
     

  • (cs) in reply to sf
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    It's astonishing that 30 pages of code in a single method worked at all. Beyond the obvious ridiculousness of if such a long-running method, there is the issue that in Java you're allowed a maximum of 64K characters inside of a try/catch block.


     

     

    If true this smells of a compiler-specific limitation.  There's no limitation like this in the language specification. 

    Damn straight it's in the specification - the virtual machine spec, not the language spec. Second edition, section 4.8.1 "Static Constraints on Java Virtual Machine Code" - constraint #2 "The value of the code_length item must be less than 65536."

  • (cs) in reply to Hawk777
    Hawk777:
    Anonymous:

     

    If true this smells of a compiler-specific limitation.  There's no limitation like this in the language specification. 

    Damn straight it's in the specification - the virtual machine spec, not the language spec. Second edition, section 4.8.1 "Static Constraints on Java Virtual Machine Code" - constraint #2 "The value of the code_length item must be less than 65536."

    This is true but applies to bytecode and not source text. This is due to bytecode design, for example branches have 16-bit addresses.
     

     

  • (cs) in reply to Brian
    Anonymous:

    You discover it by having a big complex Spring/JSTL JSP template with a lot of HTML formatting, <spring:bind> and other JSTL tags in it and then try to deploy it on a Sun ONE 6.1 server. Sun ONE uses what appears to be an old and naive implementation of the Apache Jasper compiler. While the Jasper2 compiler in Tomcat 5 turns the JSTL tags into resusable methods, the older Jasper compiler emits all of the statements into a single try/catch inside of a single method. Bascially you end up with an unbelievable amount of code within a single method.

     The only way to get it to work is to break the JSP into sub-JSPs and include them with <jsp:include/>. It's a WTF in and of itself.

    Is it impossible to update the compiler? Or was that just the particular compiler version installed by whatever idiot ran your hosting company? 

  • Erik Buitenhuis (unregistered)

    >The condescending presentation wasn't what killed Jack's enthusiasm. It died the moment the Java >Guru explained what an "application" was: a single, JSP page.

    Wow, a single page interface!
    Actually very Web 2.0-ish. This guy was way ahead of his time!
     

  • (cs) in reply to Erik Buitenhuis

    Too bad they did not use a real web programming language like Cold-Fusion.

     

     Naaaaah... I know weak ass attempt of trying to start that flamewar again..
     

  • Jake (unregistered)

    Sounds more like 3 tears

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