The Web Framework Smackdown Questions
I'm doing my Web Frameworks Smackdown this morning at TheServerSide Conference. A few weeks ago, I asked What Would You Ask the Web Framework Experts? on Javalobby and LinkedIn. Here's a summary of those questions:
- What is the overall performance of your framework as it compares to others?
- How does your web framework position themselves in relation to Web Beans?
- How easy is it to create a re-useable component in your framework? Is it as easy as sub-classing an existing component?
- What is the key differentiating characteristic of your framework that makes it better than the rest?
- What do you think about the various scopes introduced by Seam, e.g. conversation vs request or session? If you support these additional scopes, do you also provide some sort of concurrency control?
- Why can't we, the Java Community, come together and adopt the best application framework and settle the web development subject?
- What are you doing to help with developer productivity?
- 2008 is a huge year for the mobile web. How do you help developers build great mobile web applications?
- If you couldn't use your framework, what would you use and why?
- How do you enable rich Ajax applications?
- Can a developer make a change to source, and hit RELOAD in the browser to see the change? If not, why not?
- What do you think about the whole Flex revolution, and do you think you are competitors to this technology?
- How easy is it to create a module and plug it into a bigger application, complete with configuration, code, and view?
Of course, there's many more questions on the aforementioned pages, these are just some that I hope to ask during the panel. Sitting on the panel: Don Brown (Struts 2), Keith Donald (Spring MVC), Ed Burns (JSF), David Geary (GWT), Geert Bevin (RIFE/OpenLaszlo) and Justin Gehtland (Rails). I tried to get Flex and Grails folks, but they'd either left the conference already or are speaking at the same time.
Update: InfoWorld has some modest coverage of this event in Web frameworks debated at TheServerSide Java Symposium.
Posted by Ned Collyer on March 29, 2008 at 06:56 AM MDT #
Posted by Peter Thomas on March 29, 2008 at 04:19 PM MDT #
Posted by Matt Raible on March 29, 2008 at 05:47 PM MDT #
Posted by Mats Henricson on March 29, 2008 at 11:44 PM MDT #
"with most using Struts 1/2 and Spring MVC."
ahh the poor fools ;)
Posted by Ned Collyer on March 30, 2008 at 11:07 AM MDT #
Posted by Howard M. Lewis Ship on March 31, 2008 at 05:44 AM MDT #
Ah, yes. Sounds like corporate developers. :D Personally, once I started using Wicket, it was hard for me to use anything else. I have not had any experience with Struts 2, so I cannot comment on it, but JSF/Spring MVC (not really a view layer)/Struts 1/Tapestry just don't cut the mustard anymore.
Also, the coverage by InfoWorld made me cry.
Posted by Michael Laccetti on April 03, 2008 at 06:31 PM MDT #
Posted by Renat Zubairov on April 05, 2008 at 08:12 PM MDT #
What! Tapestry changed again :)
And IMO it is Tapestry that has some catching up to do.
Let the flame wars begin...
Posted by Peter Thomas on April 07, 2008 at 08:28 AM MDT #
Posted by Bob Schellink on April 08, 2008 at 10:57 AM MDT #
Posted by Angelo Digrassi on April 11, 2008 at 07:04 AM MDT #
True, but it seems as if you are arguing that shopping around for different frameworks is a problem. Personally I enjoy the process. The important thing is to find a framework that you enjoy working with. Once you find it, master it and stick to it ;-). There is no need to keep abreast with each and every framework that is developed.
As a corporate developer myself I do agree that a real problem is when you move to another company or department and you have to relearn an entire new Java technology stack. For example one company might use Websphere+Portal+JSF+Hibernate+Spring and another use JBoss+JDO+Guice. Even with standards in place I find it hard to make this jump.
Posted by Bob Schellink on April 11, 2008 at 07:49 AM MDT #
Posted by Jose Noheda on April 13, 2008 at 11:49 AM MDT #
Posted by 58.96.21.61 on April 14, 2008 at 06:44 AM MDT #