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Why I'm Moving Away from the Play Framework

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Re: Why I'm Moving Away from the Play Framework

#21

Post by djb_hackernews »

oacgnol wrote: post #4

I'm curious as to specific code examples where the author is having problems. I'm thinking about using Play! or Lift for a pet web app using Scala. Does anyone have experience using either?

I use Play! for my hobby projects and Lift for work. Coming from MVC lift is very bizarre. Having html and javascript inside my scala classes gives me a queasy feeling.

I also think Lift is dead. The creator of the project left, the documentation isn't great, View first model isn't popular, very little activity in #lift, very little activity in the lift framework google group. Not good signs.

Re: Why I'm Moving Away from the Play Framework

#22

Post by fauigerzigerk »

This confirms my bias against frameworks in general and in fact against reusing more code than necessary. And no, I would not write an encryption library myself or re-implement the HTTP protocol.

But the disparity between what web frameworks actually do for me in any particular application and the amount of layers and dependencies they introduce boggles my mind.

[Edit] If you use maven try mvn dependency:tree

Re: Why I'm Moving Away from the Play Framework

#23

Post by rkalla »

scylla wrote: post #20
JohnTitus wrote: post #8

So what's the best alternative for a Java shop?

We're using Apache Wicket and are pretty happy with it.

Has Wicket changed to not require so much code? I wrote a handful of apps using Wicket 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 before realizing I was writing thousands of lines of code to update UI models and backend models that shouldn't be taxing me so much.

Used Play for a few projects, but don't like that 2.0 is more or less getting rewritten... don't like Spring... not sure what is left (JEE6 and JSF2? God I don't want to use JSF again unless it changed significantly)

Re: Why I'm Moving Away from the Play Framework

#24

Post by stcredzero »

hp wrote: post #18

"They didn't take a patch on one occasion, and then we had a couple never-diagnosed bugs that we think could have been in the framework." Fair enough, but I wouldn't switch to an inferior framework over it.

If that shop is stuck with debugging into a method in HashMap, then they aren't qualified to evaluate whether or not it's in the framework. That said, the developer community needs to address the problem though education, if it's user error (most likely) or come up with enough manpower to be more active in support.

After having seen their video, I have to say that the Play! framework folks seem very insightful in their design goals. They hit the nail right on the head in terms of the major usability problems of most Java Web AppServer software.

Re: Why I'm Moving Away from the Play Framework

#25

Post by hp »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #22

This confirms my bias against frameworks in general and in fact against reusing more code than necessary. And no, I would not write an encryption library myself or re-implement the HTTP protocol. But the disparity between what web frameworks actually do for me in any particular application and the amount of layers and dependencies they introduce boggles my mind. [Edit] If you use maven try mvn dependency:tree

Play is really not a large amount of code though and it's all in one source tree. It generally doesn't have a lot of "layers" compared to even something like Tomcat; the stack just doesn't get as deep. I've had an easy time digging in to the Play source code when needed.

Just one experience fwiw. Sure, it's still a framework.

Re: Why I'm Moving Away from the Play Framework

#27

Post by leftnode »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #21
oacgnol wrote: post #4

I'm curious as to specific code examples where the author is having problems. I'm thinking about using Play! or Lift for a pet web app using Scala. Does anyone have experience using either?

I use Play! for my hobby projects and Lift for work. Coming from MVC lift is very bizarre. Having html and javascript inside my scala classes gives me a queasy feeling. I also think Lift is dead. The creator of the project left, the documentation isn't great, View first model isn't popular, very little activity in #lift, very little activity in the lift framework google group. Not good signs.

And, Play! just joined Typesafe, the company behind Scala. I definitely think Play! is here to stay.

Re: Why I'm Moving Away from the Play Framework

#28

Post by benmccann »

oacgnol wrote: post #4

I'm curious as to specific code examples where the author is having problems. I'm thinking about using Play! or Lift for a pet web app using Scala. Does anyone have experience using either?

I've been using Play 2 recently. I would definitely recommend it over Play 1 for new apps. I've had a very good experience with it. It's pretty easy to get started if you want to try it out and the community on the Google Groups mailing list is very helpful if you run into difficulty. Let me know if you have any more specific questions.

Re: Why I'm Moving Away from the Play Framework

#30

Post by Egregore »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #21
oacgnol wrote: post #4

I'm curious as to specific code examples where the author is having problems. I'm thinking about using Play! or Lift for a pet web app using Scala. Does anyone have experience using either?

I use Play! for my hobby projects and Lift for work. Coming from MVC lift is very bizarre. Having html and javascript inside my scala classes gives me a queasy feeling. I also think Lift is dead. The creator of the project left, the documentation isn't great, View first model isn't popular, very little activity in #lift, very little activity in the lift framework google group. Not good signs.

Are you saying that creator of Lift David Pollak left? Can you provide some links?
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