CAST has released an intriguing report on Java applications and software quality.
The company analysed 497 applications, comprising 152 million lines of code across 88 organisations and six global industries. It then looked at how software quality correlated with frameworks used.
Hibernate has the highest quality scores.
Applications built with Struts have the lowest quality scores.
Applications that did not use any framework had a huge variance in quality, which indicates that frameworks do in fact help develop applications of predictable quality.
Hibernate has the highest quality scores. A further investigation looked at what happens to software quality in mixed language applications:
Applications built in pure JEE, with no frameworks or multi-lingual mingling, had the highest quality scores.
Mixing Java with C or C++ lowers quality scores.
Mixing Java with COBOL, Java-DB, and Microsoft .NET delivered higher quality scores.
Frameworks are good but pure J2EE is better? Mixing with C/C++ lowers software quality, but mixing with .NET or COBOL raises software quality? These are odd results, and I wonder if this research is correlating the right factors. Here is a clue:
One common challenge for developers with framework usage is configuring them correctly. CAST data shows that a large majority of applications analyzed had some level of misconfiguration, indicating the need for better training or to simplify the use of frameworks.
I have a hunch that what this research really tells us is that the most competent developers deliver the highest quality code. Maybe the smartest developers do not use Struts.
