Java is one of the most popular programming languages in the world even today. The reason for its consistent popularity has a lot to do with its robust frameworks. For any commercial project development, a framework is a must for organized implementation. When it comes to Java, there are many popular frameworks available and different programmers have different preferences. Some of those popular frameworks are Spring, Struts, Hibernate, JSF, Vaadin, GWT, Grails, and others. Out of all these frameworks, Spring framework is the most popular and most widely used across the world. This can come as a surprise to many because Spring is one of the oldest frameworks in Java. The followings are the reason why Spring is more popular than other Java frameworks.
Reasons For The Popularity Of Spring–
Spring is called the framework of frameworks. The reason is that all the frameworks are supported by Spring such as Struts, Hibernate, JSF and likewise. Spring is a very powerful yet lightweight Java Enterprise Edition application development framework. There is no need for heavy Java EE application server. You can deploy its applications in any web container even in Tomcat. There are still some exclusive features that other frameworks cannot afford yet such as Spring Batch. It operates faster which is what we need in the current scenarios like mobile computing, cloud computing, and social computing. Its popularity has been sky high ever since its launch.
Developer-Friendly – The reason why most of the developers prefer Spring for almost any type and size of application developers is due to its friendly features. First of all, Spring is ready to get integrated with an existing system seamlessly and then you can work on it to improve it. In most of the enterprise level projects, the existing system of past projects can be improved to produce the rest of the present project. This saves time and resources in development, testing, and deployment. Spring offers this flexible to let any application developed in it to be integrated with third-party services or bring an application from third-party services to it so that the developers can build something new out of the old effortlessly.
Integration With Front-End Technology – At the end of the project, the backend programming or framework has to gel well with the front-end for the project to run successfully. If you are using Spring for your back-end module development, you can rest assured that the integration with the front-end will be effortless. It supports all the leading front-end technology such as Struts, AngularJS, jQuery, JSF, JSP, Tiles and much more. You can switch between databases without writing too much of coding. There are literally unlimited plugins available that you can integrate with Spring and enhance your application to a whole different level. The flexibility that Spring offers is unmatched by any other Java framework. This unlimited sea of plugins is due to Spring having the largest community support of advanced and experienced developers than any other framework.
Aspect Oriented Programming – Aspect oriented programming is a new concept that has been introduced by Spring and this has been a game changer for its popularity. There are many frameworks that are based on AOP but it is only Spring where it is perfectly implemented. This lets the developers develop applications in such a way that the business logic stays separated from the system services. As a matter of fact, Spring is tailor-made to develop applications that are complex in nature. It provides interfaces like Spring Core, Spring IoC, and Spring AOP so that different components can be developed individually and then integrated to achieve the perfect business logic.
MVC Framework – Model-View-Controller framework is literally a darling in the application development industry. There is no better and simplified framework in Java other than Spring. MVC model helps in has development by modularity, easy unit testing and even easier deployment, maintenance, and troubleshooting. It is easier to test with JUnit framework. You can use Spring Container other than Enterprise container to develop applications and test the modules out with lesser effort.
As a matter of fact, you can create business services with the need for Enterprise container which is highly beneficial for a development based company. There is no dearth of modules like Spring MVC, Spring ORM, Spring JDBC, and likewise. These varieties of modules are highly useful and boost the development rate to a great level. This also helps to divide a big project into modules and assign different teams to get them done in the due time.
Miscellaneous Features –
Another reason for its popularity over others can also be due to the fact that it has a simple learning curve in comparison to other frameworks which are slightly messy. This is the reason why companies are investing in teaching their new recruits about it in a shorter period of time and get the job done for future projects completely.
