I've been feeling like I'm getting rusty in my old age. For the last few years I've basically been doing Java. Lots of different things in/around Java: EJB3, Swing, Struts, web services, and Servlets. I did get to dip my toes in the water of Adobe Flex @ work using the Cairngorm framework. And we did get a nice result if I do say so myself. But I'm looking further afield. Lately I've been catching references to the up and coming (or here if you're ok with a balkanized user base) things like HTML5 WebStorage, or the Web SQL DB, and WebSockets. I played around a bit but I got fairly discouraged by the competing standards. So it was back to looking for a new web framework to play with. I was thinking Ruby. Then I came across Scala / Lift.
Supposedly... its awesome. I have yet to find the awesome =) I'm sure its in there somewhere. Its got many awesome seeming things... runs on the JVM, works w/ Java libs, built in COMET via Jquery (I like long polling better from a resource perspective, and Jquery has some very nice UI components), AND Scala is even a functional programming language. Its supposed to be kick ass.
But Scala and Lift have some issues. They've got more idiosyncrasies than PERL (ok maybe I went too far with that statement but we'll see). Much of it based on typing efficiencies or so I've read. Perhaps I've just gotten too fuddy-duddy to appreciate something new, but I just don't see easily read code when I look at Scala. The lack of any functional programming since college might have something to do with that of course. Also, the tool chain is crazy fun to set up.
Maybe I chose poorly. But I took the eclipse + maven + m2e + scala plugin + jetty route. I haven't even decided on persistence yet. Looks like good old postgres or maybe I'll dig more into MongoDB. MongoDB seems to have the buzz, but it appeared to be lacking in the sql query equivalents dept. when I looked. Anyhow.. yeah... setup could have been... well easier.
At the end of the day hopefully I'll have made something useful with one of the parked domains.
Supposedly... its awesome. I have yet to find the awesome =) I'm sure its in there somewhere. Its got many awesome seeming things... runs on the JVM, works w/ Java libs, built in COMET via Jquery (I like long polling better from a resource perspective, and Jquery has some very nice UI components), AND Scala is even a functional programming language. Its supposed to be kick ass.
But Scala and Lift have some issues. They've got more idiosyncrasies than PERL (ok maybe I went too far with that statement but we'll see). Much of it based on typing efficiencies or so I've read. Perhaps I've just gotten too fuddy-duddy to appreciate something new, but I just don't see easily read code when I look at Scala. The lack of any functional programming since college might have something to do with that of course. Also, the tool chain is crazy fun to set up.
Maybe I chose poorly. But I took the eclipse + maven + m2e + scala plugin + jetty route. I haven't even decided on persistence yet. Looks like good old postgres or maybe I'll dig more into MongoDB. MongoDB seems to have the buzz, but it appeared to be lacking in the sql query equivalents dept. when I looked. Anyhow.. yeah... setup could have been... well easier.
At the end of the day hopefully I'll have made something useful with one of the parked domains.
