>What the enterprise has done with it is not cool. Writing apps with layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of abstraction is ... self defeating. Then they'll holler, we need to rewrite it! All in the name of finding that one true architecture that can handle any business CR. Blech.
Those decisions were less to do with personal freedom or program simplicity, and more to do with the realities of large scale enterprise development. You end up having to adopt patterns that make individual programmers replaceable, and allow for a standardized pool of candidates with experience in $X framework. The reality is that most companies building Java software just need to be able to hire an average Java programmer to show up every day and manage their huge tangle of business logic.
Those decisions were less to do with personal freedom or program simplicity, and more to do with the realities of large scale enterprise development. You end up having to adopt patterns that make individual programmers replaceable, and allow for a standardized pool of candidates with experience in $X framework. The reality is that most companies building Java software just need to be able to hire an average Java programmer to show up every day and manage their huge tangle of business logic.