Is J2EE Dead?: And now I have to admit, the compile, build, deploy cycle of a standard J2EE application seems unbelievably daunting. — yes, Brian, J2EE is dead. And if it isn’t it should be! But that doesn’t mean that Java isn’t agile enough for web development. Maybe you should try e.g. Wicket with Guice and JavaRebel and then come back and complain. Or just as well Grails or RIFE, or JBoss Seam? Even just running JavaRebel with your legacy app will make a world of difference! And if you notice that SOA doesn’t come in any of those things that’s because SOA is just another monster for vendors to sell.