Comment by antonvs
4 months ago
I don't agree with this. Java systems were one of the earliest beneficiaries of container-based systems, which essentially obsoleted those ridiculously over-complicated, and language-specific, application servers that you mentioned.
Java users largely didn't bother with containers IME, largely for the same reasons that most Java users didn't bother with application servers. Those who did want that functionality already had it available, making the move from an existing Java application server to Docker-style containers a minor upgrade at best.
This is just a testament to how widely Java is used, and in how many different ways. Sounds like you're more focused on "Core Java" applications, or something like that. Every company I've been with since the late 90s was using application servers of some kind until Docker came along. And all of the more recent ones switched to containers and ditched the application servers.
The switch was often much more than a minor upgrade, because it often made splitting up monoliths possible in ways that the Java ecosystem itself didn't have good support for.
Tomcat and Jetty are application servers which are in almost every Spring application. There are such application servers which you mentioned, like Wildfly, but they are not obsolete as a whole.
Tomcat and Jetty are not application servers according to the Jakarta EE definition. They're just servlet containers.
The reason Spring includes those libraries is partly historical - Spring is old, and dates from the applications server days. Newer frameworks like Micronaut and Quarkus use more focused and performant libraries like Netty, Vert.x, and Undertow instead.
Not really, and apparently there is enough value to now having startups replicating application servers by running WebAssembly docker containers as Kubernetes pods.
What are you thinking of specifically? Because using WASM doesn't sound like "replicating application servers", but rather like an attempt to address things like the startup speed of typical large Java apps.
Unless you just mean that using Kubernetes at all is replicating application servers, which was my point. Kubernetes makes language-specific application servers like Wildfly/JBoss or Websphere obsolete, and is much more powerful, generic, and an improvement in just about every respect.
I rather deal with Websphere 5 than Kubernetes, that version number is on purpose, anyone that was there will get it.
As for the question I mean the startups trying to sell the idea to use WebAssembly based pods as the next big idea.