On Tue, December 13, 2005 10:25 am, Dave Newton said: > Just out of curiosity and for the sake of completeness, what didn't you > like/etc. about it? I'm also trying to decide whether or not to bother, > as I'm tending towards much lighter-weight/more agile webapp > methodologies these days.
Well, to be very honest, I can't emumerate a lot of very specific things I liked or didn't like. My current state of mind is more of a gut feeling kind of thing (which is a big part of the reason I continue to give it a chance and keep an open mind- my gut could be wrong!). That being said, there *are* a few at least somewhat specific things... * Contrary to what many people say, I don't find it to be any simpler than Struts or other frameworks I've looked at. I have to factor in the fact that I'm not a JSF expert with this next statement, but I actually find it to be somewhat *more* complex. I suspect there needs to be a differentiation between conceptual complexity and hands-on complexity though. As far as hands-on goes, what code/config you actually need to write, I haven't seen anything that makes me think its any more complex, at least not to any substantial degree. But conceptually, and probably because you need to trust the framework a little more to do more for you, I think JSF is a bit harder to get your brain around. There is a bit more "mystery", so to speak, in what JSF is doing under the covers, and if you are a person, like me, who has a tough time having all those details hidden from you, it can paradoxically be harder to understand what is actually simpler. * While this isn't a failing of JSF, it has to be factored in: there is a lack of *good* examples and documentation in my opinion. Oh, there is *plenty* of examples and documentation in general, but it seems to all be way too simplistic to be of any real help. Or it's a kitchen sink thing and you can't parse out the necessary from the fluff. Note that I'm talking about JSF in general... Shale has a lack of examples, although the documentation looks pretty good, but there are no tutorials that I'm aware of... none of this matters for Shale though because its still coming together and thus you cut it some slack. JSF as a whole though is supposed to be mature, and part of maturity in my opinion is good documentation and examples. * When your working in Struts, there are canonical answers to most questions, best-practices ways of doing things. The same is true of JSF. However, with Struts, if you want to "go off the reservation", so to speak, you can almost always do so without fighting the framework. My experience is just the opposite with JSF. If you like the "JSf Way", then you wouldn't have a problem with this, but if you like being in complete control, for me at least, its a problem. While I'm sure you *can* go off the reservation with JSF as well, it seems like much more of a fight. Some people will like the rigidity and standardization JSF can bring, and logically I can see why, but I prefer the flexibility to do it *my* way, and that doesn't seem to be a strong suite of JSF. * Hype. I generally recoil from anything that is hyped as much as JSF is, if for no other reason than I don't like being headrded around under any circumstances. Now, all those doing the hyping may well believe every single word they are saying. I certainly hope that is the case. And in the end they may well wind up being right! However, JSF is not something new. It's been around for quite a while now, and it has yet to set the world on fire. This doesn't make me right and them wrong by the way, but it *does* make you wonder if its all its cracked up to be. I see JSF as being highly desirable for corporate interests, the tool vendors and those that will sell implementations and consulting services and all that, and that worries me. I like the way Struts developed: put it out there with no motivation other than to help people, and let it develop as it will. If JSF had evolved the same way, I'd have one less worry/complaint about it, but as it stands I have to wonder what the real motivation is. Like I said, there isn't much technical points there, it's mostly psychological. However, I don't see those types of objections mattering any less than technical ones. One *should* however be willing to overcome those objections when sufficient reason becomes available, and that's why I continue to keep an open mind. > JSF seems in some ways like ASP.NET, but that's a very high-level > haven't-checked-it-out-much viewpoint. If it can be as rapid as ASP but > w/o dealing with any number of Microsoft issues, including technical and > philosophical, it could be neat on those bad days J2EE is a requirement. That is a fairly accurate comparison in terms of the overall approach. That's also one of the reasons tooling is so important for JSF to succeed: once you can build an application as easily as you can in Visual Studio, more people will be on board. Arguably this isn't a good thing though... it tends to lower the caliber of developer at the same time. But from the viewpoint of businesses, it's a great thing, and ultimately that's what tends to win the day... that's one of the reasons I won't place my bet down against JSF 100% just yet :) > Dave Frank --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
