Background

Published: Jan 17, 2006

Although I have been in software development for quite a long time, it wasn't until a couple years ago that I had a chance to take a stab at building a website myself. Having had several years of Java experience under my belt, I was quite naturally inclined to use the language I liked the most to implement what I had in mind.

Since web development in general was a very obscure subject for me at the time, I bought some basic servlets & JSP books, went ahead and before I knew it I was doing my website in the most common technique, using JSP as the presentation layer technology. What I ended up with was a rather messy pile-up of poorly structured code and awful-looking pages with lots of scriplets peppered all over the place. Even though I eventually got the site working more or less the way I wanted it to, there was no chance I could possibly maintain it, let alone extend in functionality.

Looking back at what happened, I now realize that it is not that I was particularly stupid; it is just that developing for the web represents such a considerable shift in paradigm as compared to the more traditional client-server and desktop application development that you really have to adjust your way of thinking in order to fully grasp the peculiarities of the request/response servicing model and structure your web application accordingly.

This is one aspect where most J2EE resources fall short. While the basic servlets & JSP books are in general pretty good at explaining the various nuances of the Servlets API, they offer little advice with regard to the overall organization of a web-oriented system, much less so to the website building process in general. It took me another couple of years and a few more web projects to put together the pieces of the puzzle and work out my own approach toward effective web application development — through a lot of hard work, extensive research and critical thinking.

I wish there was a place on the net where they could tell me all those things in the beginning, when I needed it the most. Unfortunately, there was none. Even now, as I write these words, I have yet to find a single resource where the process of developing web applications in Java would be explained in a concise, straightforward, step by step manner. Therefore, I took it upon myself to fill this gap. I built a sample web application called Puffies which I am going to use as a point of reference in discussing the various principles, practices and techniques commonly employed in Java web projects — throughout the tutorial and other technical materials on this website.

And if you are wondering if there is a hidden agenda behind my work, then yes, you guessed it right. I am doing this because that is what my idea of a better world is. It just makes me feel good knowing that my site makes a whole lot of difference in shaping the web development landscape, as it allows for an easier transition for those trapped in the scripting mentality into the wonderful world of OO idioms we enjoy here in the Java land .

Last edited: Feb 06, 2006