On Sun, 18 Aug 2002, neal wrote:
> Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2002 15:07:45 -0700
> From: neal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: Struts Users Mailing List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: Struts Users Mailing List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: RE: when to use Struts
>
> Yeah, I know what I am saying would be like reinventing the wheel, and thus
> the point of using a framework (to not reinvent the wheel). However, my
> main concern is that learning to use this 'wheel' might take longer than
> building one myself.
>
A data point might be interesting for you.
Especially in the early days when there wasn't anything like Struts
available, a very large number of people came across Struts and said
"boy, am I glad I found this ... now I don't have to keep maintaining my
own." and "gee, I was halfway done with my own and starting to find it
painful." These people recognized an important principle.
You're absolutely right that you can create a controller servlet like the
one in Struts pretty easily -- but that is not the entire cost in order to
do a fair comparison. You also have to count in all of the effort it's
going to take, now and forever more, to maintain your own framework and
add any new features that you see in other frameworks and want for
yourself.
I haven't added it up precisely, but just my own efforts that have gone
into Struts might prove illuminating ... the basic framework, and the
initial set of custom tags, was written from scratch over about twenty
hours on a three-day holiday weekend to the beach (needless to say, my
wife wasn't particularly happy with me ...). In the 27 months or so since
then, I've easily invested a hundred times that many hours in updates and
fixes -- to say nothing of the efforts of at least ten other committers
and untold numbers of people who have volunteerd patches and improvement
suggestions.
For a framework developer, that cost is pretty modest compared to the
returns. For a person whose primary job is to produce web applications,
the investment in building your own framework directly takes away precious
developer hours and attention from building the applications themselves --
the cost of training on a framework like Struts (assuming its meet your
basic needs) is trivial by comparison.
Craig
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