Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Why I hate tomcat

Tomcat gets some Bile!

I have to say that I completely agree with the specific code issues noted in the article, they are all pretty elementary (exceptions for flow control, multiple returns, catching throwable, swallowing exceptions, returning concrete types over interfaces, etc, etc, etc) yet I do not personally hate Tomcat. I like it. I use it.

Certainly it is not perfect, and there are many examples of shitty code therein, but it works well (at least in my experience, which includes production use on moderately busy commercial apps) and I greatly appreciate that I can peruse the source when the occasion warrants it (the whole nature of "open sores" thing, and of course the price is right).

Other reasons I like it include the fact that I have used the commercial alternatives such as WebSphere, SilverStream and others. They were/are in my opinion . . . TOTAL CRAP. (I have used WebLogic also, which I would put a tier above those others, but still not great.) Now I admit those products are not analogous to Tomcat (Tomcat is JSP/Servlet only, those others are/were complete J2EE implementations) but just the same the giant commercial expensive as hell products should be easy to use and perform flawlessly. While I have not seen the source, the commercial products have plenty of other problems (and I would be willing to bet the source itself is even more entertaining than that of open source counterparts). The commercial products often have seemingly arbitrary tertiary requirements (you HAVE to install DB2, WTF?, you have to use this companies JVM, etc), have clumsy and sketchy deployment/administration utilities (and disallow you just editing the damn config files by hand), have proprietary dependencies or usage idioms that leave fingerprints on the code itself (making it less portable) and plain ole have shitty performance in many scenarios. Try doing any goddamn thing with Websphere 4 (yeah they have newer revs which are better, but I aint going back just based on the nightmares, post traumatic past websphere developer syndrome).

So while Tomcat has its issues, and the bile is funny as always, I usually feel even less comfortable using various commercial counterparts.

(And on a tangent, if anything else deserves some bile its the LAME ASS bile site itself (and JRoller). Right now the "permalink" goes to a page without the article - just to comments (tell me thats by design and I will still tell you its asinine, and it is not by design, unless it is a new "feature"). If you surf around and look at the article in the middle of the rest of the front page (if you still can before its gone and the permalink still does not show the article) then the stupid float right sidebar ends up ON TOP OF the article (unless your browser window - not your desktop rez - is larger than 1024x768). Brilliant work on the site itself from the bile belching Jordanian pilot.)