On Jun 3, 2014, at 4:05 PM, arjan tijms <arjan.tijms_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Tuesday, June 3, 2014, Santiago Pericas-Geertsen wrote:
> JSF has a number of different parts, not all of which are applicable to an MVC framework.
>
> Maybe it's important to be aware of some of the terminology to make it clear what we're really talking about.
>
> Pretty much everything in JSF applies to an MVC framework, since JSF already IS an MVC framework at its core and always has been.
Maybe I wasn't clear in my e-mail, but I was referring to a _JAX-RS based_ MVC framework. Again, not every part of JSF applies here.
> Some, such as the Facelets templating language, could be plugged into a JAX-RS based MVC framework
>
> In the current way that things are implemented "just Facelets" (implying no JSF) would be questionable. Even if the view would use no explicit components, plain markup would still be compiled into UIInstructions, which has UIComponentBase as its super class. If anything, this particular class basically -is- JSF.
No, form processing, for example, could potentially be very different to JSF in this framework.
>
> As far as to why MVC? The world domination of "thick clients" (Angular, etc.) is a bit overblown. Yes, these technologies are great and will continue to evolve in the next few years. However, (i) historically, there has not been a single technology dominating the UI space and (ii) these paradigm shifts do not happen overnight.
>
> We have not arrived to the decision of supporting MVC without a careful consideration of (i) community feedback and (ii) research data. MVC (and Spring MVC in particular) is the most popular Java UI technology by a good margin:
>
> https://twitter.com/RebelLabs/status/471680296119971841/photo/1
>
> And this is just an example, there are many other reports like that.
>
> I don't entirely agree with the above conclusion. While I don't contest that Spring MVC is indeed popular, I find the 40% somewhat remarkable. Other sources that I've seen don't really support this.
>
> In fact, many surveys seem to put JSF at number 1 or 2 and put Spring MVC at a lower place. You just happened to pick the one where Spring MVC wins by a large margin.
>
> A number of surveys have been collected here: https://henk53.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/reply-to-comparing-java-web-frameworks
>
> In the rebellabs surveys Spring MVC indeed wins, but JSF is at number 2. Is this 1 position difference really worth the potential confusion?
IMO, whether JSF if second or third or whatever is beyond the point. We are not trying to compare Spring MVC vs. JSF; nor are we going to suggest that everyone should move away from JSF. However, the Java EE survey that was recently conducted indicated that 60% of the developers will like to see an MVC solution alongside JSF:
https://java.net/downloads/javaee-spec/JavaEE8_Community_Survey_Results.pdf
This is a very good indication that not everyone is satisfied with our EE offering, so this decision is about choice. Of all the frameworks (not named JSF) Spring MVC seems the most popular and the best fit for EE.
As far as the framework surveys, I agree with you there are some that contradicting results. The one I included above was just an example (and again I was not trying to compare Spring against JSF) there are many more that show Spring MVC being at or near the top, some of which you found as well.
-- Santiago