JVM Frameworks, which one?

Question

I don't have much experience in frameworks or languages, so i need your help.

Here's what i've done so far so you can understand where i'm coming from.

I've developed a web app using Java/Spring MVC/Hibernate. on the front end i've got some jquery datatables doing ajax calls to a db, another pages executes a stored prod and thats about it.

Now i got fed up with all the configuration, beans, hibernate mapppings, spring mappings, apache tiles, and the list goes on.

I had a play with Groovy/Grails and that seems so much easier, but that means i need to learn groovy and i've heard about it's performance weakness.

So i ran into Play Framework, can someone tell me if Play would make my life easier with the above scenario or should i just go into Groovy/Grails or even scala/lift.

I don't have too much time on my hands to pick up another language so if i can stay with core Java and use Play that would be great.

So is my described headache the reason why there's RoR/python-django, grails ect,ect? or is it something else?

thanks,

glenn.

Answer 1

I can tell you from the perspective of a 10 year J2EE developer who went from JSP/servlet to Grails to Play. 6 years ago I discovered groovy and I liked it very much, I've been using groovy and it's GSP templates in my other projects for code generation. I really love groovy syntax. Because you can do a lot in a single line of code ;) Because of groovy I tried Grails. But, besides the use of the language to code something in perhaps some 20% of the project time, you are 80% dealing with Grails conventions. How do they map this and that and to the persistence layer (which is JPA underneath the surface). So you're browsing the docs most of the time.

Then I found play. It really felt natural. Everything is so quick with it. Everything is direct, it is 80% undisturbed, productive coding, only 20% reading the docs. The code completion of any Java IDE is literally sufficient support. In Grails you either need a Grails IDE or you find yourself frequently browsing the docs.

The biggest attractor of Play to me is the hot code swap feature, which nearly completely eliminates the build phase. Play's class enhancers give you enough comfort to get over the loss of those dynamic finders in Grails. In the meantime, I even write my own enhancers to get even more comfort.

In a real project, the strongly typed Java language is a huge benefit to all developers. You just can't break it so easily as you can with groovy.

Also, if you look at the Play package, you always get reasonable defaults. Things that all developers like. jQuery based CRUD, beautiful code samples, good visual experience. And it's all as minimalistic as possible. Which means, you can always go to the play framework source itself and read the code to understand play's behavior.

So to sum up, after 10 year of Java and J2EE frustration and almost giving up on Java I switched back to it as implemented by Play, because in Play it is so much fun and I now love it again. I recommended play to 2 other developer friends and they love it too. It feels like the Java that it should have been in the first place. Fast, clean, secure & a lot of fun. I will never use something else based on Java, not even for a simple main() ;)