::Open source WebObjects is worth looking at:: [/tech] (10:40)

I just saw the news that WebObjects is going Open Source. I spent some time last year learning WebObjects. It was a whim, but I wanted to understand what exactly made WebObjects users so excited.

WebObjects is an absolutely amazing web framework. It's a decade old, and yet it is more sophisticated than most of the Java web frameworks being used today. When I first started using it, I really wanted to kick myself for all the years I hacked together apps using dumb action frameworks like Struts. While the Java community has finally partially caught up (JSF, Seam, Tapestry, etc...) most Java developers I meet are using technologies that aren't even as advanced as a 10-year old WebObjects. (and don't even get me started on how behind the times something like Rails is)

If WebObjects was so great, why didn't it catch on? I think the primary reason was that it was proprietary. Not only was WebObject proprietary and expensive, it ran on a non-free Objective-C environment. That would have been a tough sell all by itself, but with the rise of a free (beer) Java and the Java hype machine (sounds like a band name) it just didn't stand a chance. WebObjects was so hopelessly outgunned that I didn't even hear about it for the first time until years later when it morphed into a Java framework. (I'm just one data point, but I think my experience is fairly representative)

Will an open source WebObjects catch on? Honestly, I doubt it. Even today, WebObjects is probably better than what most people are using, but the Java world finally has had a chance to catch up. While nobody yet offers the complete end-to-end solution that WebObjects does, we certainly have learned the secrets of component web development, and we can do it with code that meets modern developer sensibilities a lot better. Given that we have standards-based alternatives now, I don't see anything that would shift to give WebObjects a significant market share.

You should still look at WebObjects because it is one of the best examples of the power of component web development. The tools make it extremely easy to understand what is going on and really help you to see feel more like you are developing a GUI than a web application, and that is exactly the way web development should feel. It is both more powerful and simpler than the action frameworks. If you have trouble understanding why, I recommend sitting down and playing with WebObjects a bit. The experience is very compelling. If you already use JSF or Tapestry and wonder what a true-integrated experience could be like, look at WebObjects. If you just want to understand how much better your web application experience could have been all these years, look at WebObjects.

No, learning WebObjects probably won't land you a new job, but I think it will change the way you think about web applications.