My Other Spring 2 Book is Finally Out

This is a blast from the past. Way back in January 2006 I wrote a chapter for what was then called Beginning Spring 2. I sent the chapter along in draft form for initial feedback. I never heard back, so I figured the author or publisher dropped the book.

Well, the other day I received a box of three copies of Building Spring 2 Enterprise Applications. And my name was squarely on the cover. Who knew?

First off, I want to thank whoever did the review and editing of the chapter. Those are tough jobs. Also thanks to the rest of the authors for pulling together to push the book out.

I'm still not sure what the story is behind the book or my chapter. I never had a chance to edit the chapter or review it before publication. The title has changed. The original author left the project. So I want to apologize if it doesn't make any sense or has errors.

I thumbed through the book, and all that Spring came crashing back to me. See, the secret is, ever since I wrote Expert Spring MVC and Web Flow, I have been using Ruby on Rails. So checking out this new Spring book has made me realize how much easier it is to write web applications in Rails than Spring. Don't get me wrong, the Spring Framework has the best engineered code I've ever seen (certainly much better than Rails core code), and I learned a lot about the right way to construct a framework. I still maintain that Spring is a better choice if you have to integrate with many different technologies (whether you like it or not). But as always, choose the right tool for the job.

That said, I'm happy Building Spring 2 Enterprise Applications finally made it out.

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