At the time, Java. J2EE (entity beans and session beans), Java Server Pages, Apache Struts. I think it's hard for people who didn't live through it to appreciate just how painful it was to work in that stack circa 1999-2003, like it just doesn't seem plausible that the whole industry would go along with a stack with that much boilerplate for that little added value.
Back then, Ruby and Rails opened a lot of people's minds to the idea that we were allowed to make "delightful" a consideration in API design, not just S.O.L.I.D. or whatever. These days, there are way more mainstream languages, frameworks, and communities that take humane APIs seriously.
At the time, Java. J2EE (entity beans and session beans), Java Server Pages, Apache Struts. I think it's hard for people who didn't live through it to appreciate just how painful it was to work in that stack circa 1999-2003, like it just doesn't seem plausible that the whole industry would go along with a stack with that much boilerplate for that little added value.
Back then, Ruby and Rails opened a lot of people's minds to the idea that we were allowed to make "delightful" a consideration in API design, not just S.O.L.I.D. or whatever. These days, there are way more mainstream languages, frameworks, and communities that take humane APIs seriously.