Struts
Tapestry
Webworx
Tourque/Turbine/Velocity
etc
Plenty to choose from, each with specific advantages and disadvantages. You pick the right framework for you project, which may be one of these, another lesser known framework, or your own. For example, Struts is extremely popular in the Java world (well, extremely *used*) but it's strength IMHO is for form-based applications.
I find Fusebox extremely useful because I work on a lot of different projects. I can use one framework (well, let's say two since I now support FB3 and FB4 apps for my client base) and jump back and forth between development and maintenance without a lot of thought since the apps use the same framework. And I find that my clients can frequently find other FB programmers for ongoing maintenance, etc since there are a number of CF folks who've worked with FB.
If you're in a more vertical scenario -- your group writes one app (or suite) for one company (your own), then rolling your own framework starts to make a lot of sense. You can optimize for *your* problems, not a general set of problems. I've done a a few VoiceXML apps, and FB3 had some quirks with that which took a little work to fix -- probably could have written a better framework for those apps, but I didn't because I wanted to support as small a number of different frameworks as possible as the client count rises :) My choice -- worked for me.
I will say that if you've never designed a framework, and never worked seriously with one, you're far better off to start with an established one or two and learn them so you've got a foundation to start with. Writing frameworks is very time-intensive and complex -- and good programmers do not necessarily make good framework developers (and v-v). You could write *anything* yourself -- a CFML parser, a web server, a database engine, etc. But you pick and choose the components "off-the-shelf" that speed development -- FB4 (and MachII for that matter) are both functional off-the-shelf and solve a lot of problems without any further work on the framework. I'd rather spend my time solving my clients problems and less time writing frameworks -- that works for me.
I've used a lot of frameworks, in multiple languages (eg Mason in Perl, Struts in Java, FB in CF), and I've found that web application frameworks converge onto a small subset of possible solutions to the general problem of building a web site -- there's more similarities than differences between them.
Regards,
John Paul Ashenfelter
CTO/Transitionpoint
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Farmer
To: CF-Talk
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 11:41 PM
Subject: RE: Fusebox - whats the big deal anyway?
Thanks to those who responded about Fusebox. I think after listening to
everything people have said I do know more about it and can appreciate it
more. However, I still believe that there are other ways of doing
things...and that we should never accept one way as "the best way" or "The
only way".
Someone mentioned something about creativity being seperate from designing
an app. I would STRONGLY disagree with this person. Programming cannot be
defined as strictly a science or an artform, it lays somewhere in
between.... we shouldn't be afraid ( as cliche as this is ) to think outside
the "Fusebox". =)
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