I recently went on a quest to find the best tools and frameworks on which to build a new Java web application. AppFuse by Matt Raible is one of about 4,873 different pieces of open source software I've tried out in the last eleven days.
Okay, I'm exaggerating a little. But only a little.
SourceForge and Jakarta are amazing treasure troves of mouth-wateringly enticing software tools. (Some of them even work.) And that's just the beginning. There's OpenSymphony, codehaus, java.net, and countless other sources of open source tools and libraries. You can make a career out of exploring them all. And you can do it all without ever accomplishing anything. It's a wonderful, horrible thing.
The nice thing is that there are people who have been down the road before you and have discovered what's really good and what's not so hot. The beauty of AppFuse is that Matt has gathered a whole bunch of the "best-selling" open source tools into a cohesive package -- not to mention the fact that AppFuse does some of the fundamental things that practically every web app needs, such as user registration, login, security, and administration. Best of all, AppFuse let's you be productive before you truly understand all the tools and concepts you're using.
I'll say that again:
AppFuse makes it possible for you to be productive, to take advantage of some of the most powerful and widely used open source development tools, before you really understand what you're doing. As a beautiful side-effect of this, you become familiar with Ant, Hibernate, Spring, Struts, Tiles, XDoclet, JUnit, Cactus, Canoo, DBUnit, and on and on -- all in the process of developing your application!
It's a headstart on your application
It's an education in web application development.
It's a dessert topping.
Wait, you're both right. Well, two out of three, anyway.
Matt continues to add new frameworks and features to AppFuse. Want to develop a web app, but you don't know where to start? Want to keep up with the latest, hottest Java development tools and frameworks? Want to learn about web app development and still be productive? Try AppFuse.