On 8/25/05, Paul Benedict <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The subject line asks it all. Is it true? >
Like a lot of journalism nowdays :-(, the subject line (and the thinking behind it) presumes that the real world is binary in its response to changing conditions. That is decidedly not the case -- indeed, I would likely contend that the real world response isn't even responsive to *analog* (versus digital) design analysis -- it's much more fractal than that. (Translation, if you want a short answer that lets you skip the rest of this response -- there is no such thing as a single answer to this kind of question, so it's pretty useless to debate what that answer might be.) > I hope we see a version 1.2.8 and a 1.3 soon, but I am > sorry to see all the innovation going into Spring > (YEAH!) and Shale (YAWN!), with no one really wanting > to continue growing the classic framework. Whatever you think of Shale, you're totally naive if you believe nobody cares about Struts Classic -- no matter what the development activity level at any point of time might be. Besides the efforts going into the 1.3 refactoring train, think outside the box for a minute. Even if Struts Classic development stopped *totally*, would that impact the fact that there are *thousands* of existing apps dependent on these APIs. Those apps do not go away simply because some new framework comes along and has cool new ideas. The needs of the developers of those apps need to be paid attention to ... and the Struts community is responding to those needs. > > Is it viable to evolve Struts Classic into Shale, and > mix into the Shale source support for good old Struts? > I say it sounds like a good idea to me.... but I hope > there are better ideas than mine, or we'd all be in > trouble ;-) > Actually, I'm coming to the conclusion that this is not *necessarily* a good idea. The basic ideas that drove the development of Struts were formed a little over five years ago. (OK, to be precise, I typed the original Struts 0.x code into my laptop over a vacation at the Oregon coast in May 2000, much to the chagrin of my wife, but after 31 years together she's started to get the idea of who I am and what I do :-). The world of web development has changed *dramatically* in that amount of time ... so one common viewpoint is that (negatively expressed) Struts Classic is dead. But another viewpoint should be "shouldn't the Struts community evolve Struts to take advantage of everything the world has learned since then?" If I were a Struts user, I would be *really* unhappy if the Struts developers were not paying attention to what is going on in the world. What happens to Struts itself, however, is only part of a broader picture. The world has definitely come up with some better (and, in some cases *much* better -- think about the fact that this is the very creator of Struts telling you this) ideas. How should the Struts community react? I believe that *all* of the following responses are appropriate: * Continue to maintain and enhance a kind of Struts that is fundamentally backwards compatible, thus protecting the investment people have made in both understanding Struts APIs, and the fact that nobody can afford to convert all their existing apps, all at once, to the "greatest thing since sliced bread" today. Struts 1.3.x is doing this. * Embrace an integration with new technologies as they emerge, without changing the underlying nature of the platform. Struts has demonstrated that it likes this path -- look at what happened when JSTL 1.0 was released. The new capabilities were leveraged, the existing tags were given a new lease on life (struts-el), and the world got better for Struts users. * Recognize that five years, in Internet time, is an infinity -- eventually, some other technology is going to obsolete you. Given that this is *absolutely certain* to occur, does the Struts community choose to provide to their users a path to take advantage of what has now become possible, or do they act like ostriches and assume everyone should extend Action and ActionForm now until the end of time. > With that said, this is my opinion based on > observation of the amazing industry progression in the > MVC area. I hope the Struts committers aren't burnt > out. I love Struts which is why I ask this tough > question. I hope I get some good news and be told I am > wrong :) > As I said at the beginning, the world is not simplistic enough for binary answers like "you are right" or "you are wrong". Yes, Struts Classic is evolving. Yes, there is a way to integrate new mainstream technologies with Struts Classic (the struts-faces integration library). Yes, the Struts community is actively developing (more than one) possible successors to Struts Classic. Given that successors to Struts Classic are *guaranteed* to emerge, would you rather have them come from the Struts community (who might actually care about providing transition paths) or not? Of course, the whole response above assumes that readers understand that the motivations driving open source developers to do what they do are the same as what drives programmers working for a company to do what they do. If you don't understand that difference, you are *never* going to have a clear understanding of how development of open source technologies is fundamentally different -- none of the perceptions you might traditionally have of your own company's geeks actually apply here. > Thanks! > Paul Craig McClanahan --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
