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Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

jacquesmattheij.com

131–140 of 228 posts

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#131

FWIW, I'd remove GWT from consideration. I heard that it's shortlisted for end-of-life at Google because it's a hassle to work with. Anecdotally, I agree with that. I once built a product on GWT because it impressed me so much on paper. Static typing, compiling permutations of your app and loading only what's needed, optimization of stylesheets, rendering only on the client etc. It seemed perfect. IIRC the two main i…

> I heard that it's shortlisted for end-of-life at Google because it's a hassle to work with.

Did you hear that from a Googler that actually knows their long term budget/support plans for GWT, or just the usual misguided rumors?

Right now Google has 4-5 full-time developers working on GWT because it's used by AdWords (huge) and literally 1,000+ other projects (private and public) inside of Google (including for parts the new "Sheets 2.0" of Google spreadsheets).

The end-of-life comment aside, which I'm admittedly defensive about, your other criticisms are unfortunately very valid.

Personally, I think a good framework is essential, and the compiler is a known issue that they currently have several smart people working on. We should see by mid-summer if they pull it off.

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#132
It was a great article! Very nice to read about how someone else thinks when making descisions. Regarding your choice I think you should look a little bit more at javascript frameworks like Mithril and React, they can be used on the server or on the client which holds many doors open for you. Mithril might fall for your demands on previous usage and minimum age but it seems to get web programming very close to other programming and is small enough that you should be able to do maintenance of if yourself if you have to a few years down the line. http://lhorie.github.io/mithril/

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laravel isn't going away, even if Taylor gets hit by a bus. There's a huge and active Laravel community, it's just that Taylor is the benevolent dictator. If Taylor was hit by a bus, there would be plenty of others who would be willing and capable to take up the baton. Seems to me pretty remarkable to rule out Laravel on this basis, yet keep CakePHP, ignoring all its other flaws.

Excellent input, thank you!

Ive been watching a few of the Laracasts episodes this week to get a feel for Laravel. https://laracasts.com/

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was really drawn to the title of your post because that's just what I have done--well, over the last few months--and I went with Clojure. I want to absolutely focus now and I can see the momentum is gonna take me for at least the next 10 years. I never rode the Rails train and after becoming a functional programming believer I'm kinda glad I didn't in retrospect, but I had always been envious of people who did make…

Another well reasoned upvote for clojure then. Tempting to put it back in, I've already played with it quite a bit, wrote some toy programs in it. Thank you!

Most welcome! I wrote that wall of text more in wanting to get my reasons out of my head, like you did, than in trying to wrestle you over to my side of the field. But if you want to be really tempted now, reconsider, like someone else commented here, the importance of concurrency and persistent data structures for web development going forward. Even for a one-man team (such as I plan to be, and actually one of my side-projects in Clojure has to do with language learning and SRS, would love to keep up with what you end up doing.) It means you can handle traffic spikes and trace errors as a one-man operation much more easily than if you had stateful bugs and failures to deal with.

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#135

Google could give a huge boost in confidence in Go, tomorrow (or rather within 2 years) - just make Go the official main language to use for writing Android apps and start deprecating Java. Once it does that, I don't think there will be any doubt in anyone's mind that Go has less chance of survival than say Java. In fact, Java will immediately lose confidence once Android drops Java (in a reasonable 3-5 year timefram…

I haven't made any mobile apps for Android precisely because it uses Java. If I could use Go to build apps - oh boy, I'd be a happy camper.

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#136
post #87

What are the problems of spring license? It's a clear apache 2.0 license which is quite used in the java world. (edit: ok, noticed that the wikipedia page was wrong, I've corrected it) Additionally, even though I'm not a fan of the following frameworks, but any java web dev know about jsf (due to being pushed as the "standard enterprise web framework") and vaadin.

I was surprised too that he hadn't heard of JavaServer Faces, given that it's the One Official Web Framework of Java. I'm not sure I'd recommend it necessarily, but it's hugely popular and well-supported, so it knocks at least a couple of his criteria right out of the park.

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#137
I'm pretty sure that PHP Fat-Free number is wrong, but regardless after my search for a framework that's the one I've been backing for the past many months on a project.

It's actively developed (just follow the dev branch, which is quite stable) and the devs/community have been quite helpful. I wanted something much lighter than Laravel, but still have all the handy features, and that fit the bill. Based on your requirement of sheer usage numbers though, I don't know if it meets that (yet).

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#138
post #99
post #17

I (naturally) think that the article's summarily dismissing Haskell is unfortunate. It's probably just the result of poor PR on Haskell's part. Haskell is not only for surpassingly intelligent people, or even optimized for them. If anything, it's the opposite: one of its core tenants is that we're not smart enough to reason about our programs in most languages. Much of the design work focuses on unloading complexity…

I'm all for trying something unfamiliar, and I could even argue for Haskell that way, but from a different angle. I would say that adopting a language for the next 10 years that doesn't have purely functional data structures at its core is a fool's errand. Persistent data structures, i.e. efficiently storing every version of your data structure, is the natural reflection of the new reality in computing where: * stora…

> virtually everyone still underestimates the impact this will have and (or perhaps because) it's very difficult to get that across in writing.

Why is it hard to get across in writing?

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#139
I don't see the point in attempting to choose a language/framework for the next decade. I would think that different languages and frameworks will be a natural fit for specific applications and perhaps the reason the author is struggling to make a decision is that he's attempting to make it based solely on the abstract rather than a concrete application.

I'm not the only one who'd like people to choose frameworks and languages on something other than gut feel and googlefight results, right?

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#140
post #87

What are the problems of spring license? It's a clear apache 2.0 license which is quite used in the java world. (edit: ok, noticed that the wikipedia page was wrong, I've corrected it) Additionally, even though I'm not a fan of the following frameworks, but any java web dev know about jsf (due to being pushed as the "standard enterprise web framework") and vaadin.

I was surprised too that he hadn't heard of JavaServer Faces, given that it's the One Official Web Framework of Java. I'm not sure I'd recommend it necessarily, but it's hugely popular and well-supported, so it knocks at least a couple of his criteria right out of the park.

Spring license mistake noticed (on the WP page it reads 'springsource', not apache 2.0!), as for JavaServer Faces, it may be extremely popular I just never ran into it in actual use and I see quite a few companies every year.

Is it somehow associated with a branch of industry that I don't have exposure to? Do you have some examples from the 100 top websites written using JavaServer Faces?

That would help me to place it better.

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