TechnoLust's Journal: The guy interviewing me today hadn't heard of Struts...

I went to an interview today for a full time position. I interviewed with 3 people at once. A "Lead Architect", the "Application Development Manager" and her boss (can't remember his title.) The App Dev Manager went first and asked me relevant questions. The Lead (an Indian guy) went next. He had a copy of my resume in front of him. He said, "Can you tell me what is Struts?" So I start explaining it to him, and about a minute into my explaination, he says, "So it's an IDE, like Eclipse?" At this point I realize he wasn't asking me to make sure I knew it and wasn't bullshitting on my resume, he'd actually not heard of it. And he's one of their lead Java guys? So I go through this very detailed explaination, and he finally gets it.

I feel like I did very well in the interview and I would be VERY surprised if they didn't offer me the job. It seemed like a good place to work and it's a full-time job, not a contract. I should hear something soon.

I can tell you what struts is...

[jawtheshark]

It's a mess... That's what it is. I know it's a framework, but if you let loose some inexperienced people on it, you simply get a mess. My idea of a framework was that frameworks are made to avoid a mess, even with inexperienced people.

Besides, isn't struts dead by now? Wasn't JavaServerFaces (or whatever it is called) going to take over?

Re:I can tell you what struts is...

[Iamthefallen]

It's Ruby On Rails this week, by June we're all switching to Python In Wheelbarrow.

Re:I can tell you what struts is...

[blinder]

while admit the "buzz" around ror is, well, goofy, i will say that there is a lot of technical merit behind it. struts is dead. struts is terrible. struts is just a big fucking ugly mess that can and does blow up in a real environment.

rails, however, is clean and rather elegant, and takes all of about 12 minutes to learn. struts? i still, after nearly two years, scratch my head at stuff. the sheer volume of configuration that goes into struts is enough to make my skin crawl.

will rails grow up and become re

Re:I can tell you what struts is...

[Iamthefallen]

I dunno, I have a hard time seing that it would be very useful until it gains more widespread accpetance.

If RoR (Just like Struts) goes the way of the Dodo in 3 years, would it be possible to find developers to maintain existing applications? How much would training cost? Can you still find components and documents?

Obviously, it'd also depend on your business and customers. In the crazy world of ecommerce, continuous rewrites might be beneficial to stay up to date and stay competitive (AJAX for instance).

Wh

Re:I can tell you what struts is...

[dubiousdave]

Java is dead, just like BSD.

Re:I can tell you what struts is...

[jawtheshark]

Damn, I actually only learnt those two technologies... :-(

Me neither...

[nocomment]

I've never heard of struts, but then...I use Zend (php guy...I know I know;)

Don't get your hopes up.

[SiliconJesus]

If there's one thing lead developers don't like, its being showed up by some noob. You should have told them they go on a car :D

Re:Don't get your hopes up.

[HBI's_girl]

Yeah... just ask HBI how one of his first interviews with a company here went...

The object lesson of that experience is that if you get interviewed by the companies employees and/or your potential superior, having more knowledge than them lessens their job security.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Don't get your hopes up.

[gmhowell]

Yeah, don't walk into an interview and threaten the existing employees even in the slightest.

Unfortunately sometimes that's hard to do when they are particularly incompetent.

This is my parents' theory on why I haven't gotten the last two jobs I interviewed for.

Re:Don't get your hopes up.

[TechnoLust]

Well his boss and her boss were both in the room, so, even if he doesn't like it, they should see that I'd be an asset. Anyway, I just answered the question, if he was that concerned about it, he wouldn't have asked me what it was.

Re:Don't get your hopes up.

[PDA_Monkey]

I agree with you except about the Indian guy not being concerned about it... Perhaps he's just naïve.

Struts?

[blueforce]

Got 4 of 'em on my oldsmobile. Damned things are expensive to replace.