Frameworks, frameworks, everywhere a framework
This is insane! I saw this list of all the different Java web frameworks on the Wicket site (another java web framework).
- Action Framework
- Baritus
- Barracuda
- Bento
- Bishop
- Cameleon
- Canyamo
- Cassandra
- Chiba
- Cocoon
- Dinamica
- Dovetail
- Echo
- Expresso
- Folium
- Genie
- Helma
- JATO
- JBanana
- JFormular
- JPublish
- JWAA
- JWarp
- Jacquard
- Jaffa
- Japple
- Jeenius
- Jucas
- Macaw
- Maverick
- Melati
- Millstone
- MyFaces
- Nacho
- Niggle
- OXF
- OpenEmcee
- RIFE
- SOFIA
- Scope
- Shocks
- Smile
- Spring MVC
- Struts
- Tapestry
- TeaServlet
- Turbine
- Verge
- Warfare
- WebOnSwing
- WebWork
- Wicket
- Xoplon
- jStatemachine
- jZonic
- wingS
And somehow with all these Java frameworks, the Java community still has the time to complain about Rails. Somewhere along the lines this stopped making sense.
Yeah, you’re right, it is a lot. On the other hand, a lot of these frameworks are quite old (and dusty), and while most those frameworks added to the collective learning experience, they are kind of relics of the past now. This is - IMHO - especially true for the model 2 ‘MVC’ frameworks (which make up about three quarters of above list), that saw tons of variations on the same theme, but never satisfied enough to stop other developers from trying to build a better one.
And I think there you’ve got the reason why there are so many of them. Compared to writing something like Swing or SWT, writing a web framework is not too hard. Hence, a low barrier to get started. But then again, it actually is very hard to write a good one, that will help you develop complex, scalable and maintainable webapplications. so what you see in the list above can be seen as a lot of iterations to - sometime - build the perfect framework (and we’re not there yet :)).
That makes a lot of sense. What I should do is somehow find out which ones are basically dead or have been abandoned and put a strike through them. That might prove to be a more interesting list—to see what percentage of frameworks on the list are still alive a kicking.