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And The Fastest Growing Web Framework Is...
URL: Rick Hightower's blog
At 4:49 AM on Sep 6, 2007, Michael Urban wrote:
Fresh Jobs for Developers Post a job opportunity
Rick Hightower made an interesting observation in his blog recently when he compared job growth rates of various Web framework technologies on www.indeed.com. The clearly undisputed winner? JSF. As you can see from the attached graph images, JSF is growing much faster than any other other listed frameworks, as well as having far more job opportunities. But is it really? Is this graph telling the whole truth? More on that later.
Also very interesting, is the Spring and Ruby on Rails plots. It seems, at least according to this job site. That Ruby on Rails and Spring are virtually neck and neck, vying with each other for which one is more popular. At various times, Ruby on Rails has been more popular than Spring, but then Spring has overtaken Ruby on Rails and become more popular again.
This one I have a few problems with, since I don't see the supporting data on other job sites for it. For example, dice.com currently lists 2114 job openings for Spring, but only 241 for Ruby on Rails. That seems to differ radically from what the data at indeed.com suggests.
Of course, the sad story in all this, is the frameworks that just don't seem to be going anywhere at all. Tapestry, despite being a strong competitor to JSF, has gone virtually no where. once it is experienced its initial growth spurt after being released. It's basically flat. Unlike the Ruby on Rails vs. Spring data, the data at dice.com seems to support this one. There are currently only 87 jobs listed for Tapestry. This part is hard to debate no matter how you spin the numbers. Tapestry is virtually flat as far as having any kind of growth.
The data for WebWork and Struts2 is just as disappointing. Neither one of them has gained any traction at all. And once again, the dice.com data seems to support this.
To be fair, Struts2 was only released in February of this year, so it hasn't had a whole lot of time to gain in popularity. But since Struts2 is based on WebWork, I feel that it is fair to combine the WebWork and Struts2 graph lines. If we do this, we still find that neither one has experienced any significant growth.
Wicket was not included in this graph, but a quick dice.com search for Wicket shows only 23 openings, bringing it in no better than WebWork or Struts2.
What does this say about the future of Java Web frameworks? Is JSF going to usurp all of them and become "The Java Web framework?" Is JSF clearly the "current hot skill to have?"
Update : As Matt Raible points out, you can significantly change the results of this graph by changing the search terms . For example "Spring" and "Struts" show that Spring is apparently leading all versions of Struts.
Thank's to Rick Hightower for finding this. And also Matt Raible for the counterpoint.
31 replies so far (
Post your own)
Re: And The Fastest Growing Web Framework Is...
I think the "java" part of the jsf search scews the results in favor of JSF. Look what happens when you compare "java jsf" with "java spring":http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java+jsf%2C+java+spring
Of course, the future isn't any web frameworks, more likely it's web development skills in general (add ajax to the query):
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java+jsf%2C+java+spring%2C+ajax
Or make JSF look bad by comparing it to PHP:
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java+jsf%2C+php
Or Struts:
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java+jsf%2C+java+struts%2C+php
IMO, to be an in-demand web developer in the future (and currently), your CSS and JavaScript skills are probably more important than your knowledge of a particular web framework.
Re: And The Fastest Growing Web Framework Is...
Very interesting..Thanks for pointing this out Matt. In fact, if you run just "Spring, Struts, JSF, Ruby, Tapestry, and Wicket", you find that Spring is clearly the winner. Even when compared to struts in general (not differentiating between Struts 1 and Struts 2), Spring is clearly still the winner. That is something I was surprised about, since Spring beats out even Struts 1 apparently when it comes to current job demand.
Unfortunately, it still doesn't bode well for Struts 2, Wicket, or Tapestry, none of which have experienced any significant growth in demand since they were released.
Thanks, and great catch.
Re: And The Fastest Growing Web Framework Is...
Ahhh, you've got to love statistics... It really all comes down to what you mean by "fastest growing" you see...Taken from pre April 05, JSF does indeed look to have had a growth-spurt, but taken from this year (2007), it seems to have had a slump or stalled (or maybe a very slight rise) wheras Rails and Spring MVC have had quite a big step up...
You could also look at it from a percentages point of view... Since Oct '05, JSF has gone from ~0.02% to ~0.06% which is a 200% rise. Rails on the other hand has gone from ~0.005% to ~0.02% which is a 300% rise
Or you could differentiate the graphs to give you degrees of slope, which would seem to show Spring MVC as being the fastest growing in recent times...
Also, where is Struts v1?
Which leads to my favorite stats quote: "86.7% of statistics are made up on the spot"
Re: And The Fastest Growing Web Framework Is...
Well, made up on the spot is probably a bit harsh.But it is true, as Matt pointed out, that you can manipulate the numbers fairly easily by altering the search terms slightly.
For example, adding Java to the JSF search term clearly gave it an advantage. Where as adding "MVC" to the Spring search term clearing put it at a disadvantage.
I'm curious... Why Rick decided to add MVC to the Spring search term... You around Rick to answer this?
Re: And The Fastest Growing Web Framework Is...
> Well, made up on the spot is probably a bit harsh.Yeah, sorry...that was more my favorite quote for statistics in general rather than this example in particular
Re: And The Fastest Growing Web Framework Is...
IMO, I'm surprised that one would search for Spring directly, since it has much wider applicability than the portion that's directed towards web application, in the role of a "web framework". We use it quite heavily in apps, server apps for example, that have nothing to do with the web; it's just a useful IOC container, sets up transactions, aspects, all that stuff. Using Spring as a search term includes job positions where they want general-purpose Spring knowledge. The MVC work seems to compete more directly in the space of "web frameworks".Regards
Patrick
Re: And The Fastest Growing Web Framework Is...
Does it even make sense to search for "Struts2"? I doubt anybody actually writes it like that.Struts seems actually even comparable to PHP:
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java+jsf%2C+php%2C+java+spring%2C+java+struts&l=
Re: And The Fastest Growing Web Framework Is...
Patrick,Yes, that's a good point that I didn't think of before. My main experience with Spring has been only as a Web framework. And I think a lot of people probably forget that it is useful in a lot of other areas as well. Me included. Definitely a good point to remember.
Re: And The Fastest Growing Web Framework Is...
Well, I think it makes sense to search for Struts2 in some form or another. Because really, Struts2 is vastly different from Struts1. It's basically a complete rewrite based on WebWork. So I suspect employers to differentiate between the two.Struts1 I suspect is not experiencing any growth, but will still have high job demand just because so much software is already written in it. Struts2, however, should be a viable contender for new application development, right up there with Spring MVC.
Re: And The Fastest Growing Web Framework Is...
> I think the "java" part of the jsf search screws the> results in favor of JSF. Look what happens when you
> compare "java jsf" with "java spring":
"spring" is no better, since spring is not a web framework as I remember. Spring MVC is a web framework. And comparing Spring to JSF is like comparing Java EE to Spring MVC.
Re: And The Fastest Growing Web Framework Is...
Good point...Experiences define our perspectives....
When someone says Spring the last thing I think of is WEB. Because I had most of my experience with Spring as a supporting framework and WEB UI was JSF.
Re: And The Fastest Growing Web Framework Is...
Somebody made this comment, but I have to emphasize it:Spring is NOT a web framework. The Spring distribution CONTAINS a web framework, Spring-MVC/WebFlow. I've used Spring in almost every project I've been involved in for the last 2 years, but I've only used MVC with or without WebFlow twice. If I were advertising, I would definitely advertise for Spring skills, but I would certainly NOT advertise for Spring-MVC skills, simply because that's not that important to us.
Let's not forget also that most employers don't advertise for a job using, say, JSF. Most of them want Java developers, with web experience. Sometimes they'll specify the framework. In most cases, they won't. That's not true of PHP or Ruby jobs, where the framework is pretty explicit (I know of very few places that use Ruby without Rails). So the comparison is off in many ways.
Re: And The Fastest Growing Web Framework Is...
ahhh another indeed.com statistic... must be slow news dayRe: And The Fastest Growing Web Framework Is...
What does this say about the future of Java Web frameworks? Is JSF going to usurp all of them and become "The Java Web framework?" Is JSF clearly the "current hot skill to have?"No. No,no,no,no,no.
No one is looking for JSF developers. And if JSF is the fastest growing java web framework, which I do not believe it is, it would be a sad statement for the state of java web development. JSF is every bit as bad as struts, I honestly believe there is no worse or more unproductive web development framework than struts.
Personally, imo if you opt to use struts or jsf when there are so many other superior options(wicket, stripes, grails, rails, tapestry, JSPs-JSTL-Servlets work well too)....there must be something wrong with you.
I live in Jacksonville, FL and was recently looking for a new job and I got more calls for C#/ASP.Net development than java. In the enterprise, asp.net is java's primary competition.