I try to find a good personal blogger lately. And I learn a lesson why Java will never be as popular as other language like PHP.
Initially, I choose a Java-based bloggers. I used these bloggers in the past. Both Pebble and blojsom are good to use as personal blog server. Both are easy to setup. This time I select Roller Weblogger. The reason I choose this because I want to try out embedded database, Derby.
Among these Java-based bloggers, blojsom is the best. It’s easy to setup, and have good amount of plug-ins. Pebble is like a pet project by Simon Brown. Roller Weblogger tries to recruit more volunteers by being an Apache project.
Frankly, all of them are well polished and with care. However, none of them shares the same appeal as equivalent PHP projects.
For some reason, I tryout WordPress. It takes about 20 minutes to setup and running.
What shock me is this. Comparing the amount of time and knowledge to setup a PHP application, a Java application is more demanding. Among these application, Roller Weblogger takes the longest time to setup. The installation guide is clearly designed for hardcore Java developers and not for average Joe (the guide misses information about Hibernate configuration with Derby). Pebble and blojsom are better but they don’t provide help if you know nothing about web container like Tomcat.
My point is this. It takes a fair amount of server-side Java knowledge to make these bloggers work. And this is not the first time I’ve experienced this. End-users are expected to know something on Java, especially Tomcat setup (knowledge on web container), JDBC connection setup (kowledge on database setup), etc. This takes time to research, and an average Joe doesn’t have patience to learn it.
On the other hand, setting up WordPress is a snap. Just follow the installation guide, and you’ll have what you want in no time. It is great if I know the required tools — Apache, MySQL and PHP. But it’s not required. The guide will point you to the right location.
Java is designed to be specialized tools. And average Joe never needs the high end features.
Debunking LAMP simplicity
Ken Wong has an interesting post called Barrier Of Entry where he talks about how Java based blogging applications don’t have the same appeal as the PHP equivalents.
I try to find a good personal blogger lately. And I learn a lesson…
Trackback by Simon Brown — August 8, 2006 @ 1:51 am