They do for legacy apps only, though, since JSP, JSF and everything on top of it, such as portlets and faces component libs, has been obsolete for many years now. Handling UI state on the server just doesn't make any technical sense when there are React, Angular and Co as mainstream GUI kits.
I guess there are still those shops maintaining intranet apps, and for whom it is a priority that everything is 100% Java, or who can't or don't want to invest into JavaScript or another web stack, but I think a responsible consultant should tell these customers that their stack is on life support now.
A lot of enterprise companies aren't buying in JS frameworks because the velocity of those frameworks is too fast. I kind of agree. When you have 50,000 desktops, a 6 month lead dragging a pile of apps over to a new browser is a nightmare scenario. All it takes is one app which the vendor doesn't give a shit about and one internal app deprecating an IE version used by 50 users due to a JS framework change in a branch office and there's a headache from hell on your plate.
Fortunately they're all starting to kick out chrome for business now.
Maybe for those customers it might make sense to donate to the Eclipse foundation to keep JSF etc. alive and to keep Java-only devs afloat? But then maintenance of J2EE has ceased because it's not economically feasible.
It probably would but it won't happen. It's difficult getting anything like that through the layers of purchasing hell.
If they provided a web site with pictures of boxes of software for min $2000 that never arrived and didn't do anything it might work better. The moment someone says "donate" the bean counters start sharpening their pitchforks.
Except that these cases are not my employer rather some customers.
In any case, I am pretty much against the mentality here that it is to switch jobs just because something isn't nice and shinny at the current employer, or customer.
Not every place on Earth is like SV avid for software developers.
What part of greenfield projects haven't you understood?!
Fads come and go, Java stays strong.
Many enterprise favor having mature technologies they can count on.
A responsible consultant should never advise customers adopting the cool JavaScript framework of the Month (TM), unless it is for building curriculum and write cool "We migrated to tech XXXX" blog posts.
You do realize TFA is about putting J2EE to rest, don't you? I'm well aware of Java's qualities on the backend, but ignoring browser innovation for 10 years (iPhone and the push for responsive) or even 15 years (Ajax) isn't good advice IMHO.
For better or worse, the same developer attitude and deployment constraints that made Java developers never look beyond the Java ecosystem is happening with Node.js developers, now that Java doesn't give you a full stack anymore (ignoring gwt and echo, which have been deprecated for 5+ years now as well).
Talking about fads, the so modern JavaScript frameworks now have discovered how to optimize user experience on mobile by doing, guess what, server side rendering!
Don't get me wrong, I heard good things about Play, but isn't it Scala? Vaadin I know only from a customer of mine who are using it for server-rendered charting apps and I guess it works well in that capacity. And Spring MVC in 2017? Come on.
My point being that these frameworks are chosen because the options are limited to what's available on the JVM, trading last-gen Java know-how against younger (and sexier) know-how.
It's also a miracle to me why JavaScript isn't more popular with Java developers, of all people, when in fact Java has two mature JavaScript engines, and JavaScript certainly is interesting from a bridge/migration perspective. Years ago Oracle and RedHat had even partial Node.js ports, but it never went very far.
Play is for Scala and Java too. Vaadin does much more than charts--although its wrapping of highcharts is pretty nice--and is quite pleasant if you'd rather write Java than HTML and its close relatives.
I guess from the Java perspective, Javascript does not look too sexy, as it is a small but dangerous / unhelpful language with an uncompetitive-to-Java library ecosystem. TypeScript is great however.
React, Webpack, CSS compilers and pretty much all other modern frontend (compile-time) asset tools are running on Node.js and install from npmjs.com. Node.js is also perfect for a shallow web-facing container developed along with the front-end as a complement to Java-based (mini/SOA/whatever)-services. So I think it's quite useful to make Node.js workloads run under the JVM.
When we talk about rich libraries we mean actual libraries for generating PDFs, reading barcodes, report generation, talking with all kinds of enterprise databases, GPU programming, parallel distributed algorithms, embedded development...
Not yet another packaging tool or fait-divers like pad left.
And the majority of them written in pure Java, not C++ wrapped in a JavaScript API.
How do you generate a PDF on such a cool JavaScript front end application?
Hint, you don't. Just hope that the browser does a good job with print to PDF, or run a server side pile of shell scripts, using LaTeX and Postscript, instead of a plain simple library.
And this is just one example from many, where JavaScript/Web sucks on the front-end.
I know of many greenfield projects using it, mainly PrimeFaces.