7 ms·

Play Framework 2.0 Beta & integration into Typesafe Stack

90 points by lapusta 15y ago

BonoboBoner 15y ago
Play's simplicity and its favouring of 'getting-shit-done'-attitude over the 'layering-and-overarchitecting'-attitude in the Java community has greatly benefited its rise. I really hope this type-safe Scala reimplementation of the framework pays off and is not a step backwards.
- vetler 15y ago
  Thankfully there are people who are working against the 'layering-and-overarchitecting'-attitude, but it takes time to get the message through.
- erwanl 15y ago
  We're still in line with our "no useless boilerplate" approach in Play 2.0. You can look at the samples and make up your own mind about whether we've been successful or not: https://github.com/playframework/Play20/tree/master/samples https://github.com/playframework/Play20/tree/master/samples
- DanielRibeiro 15y ago
  Well, they have had Scala support for quite a while: http://scala.playframework.org/ http://scala.playframework.org/
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  I hope there is still good support for us old folks who like our plain old Java!
- stephen 15y ago
  Agreed, I'm not going to say Java syntax is awesome (it's not), but I think the "over-architecting" attitude you mention has done far more to drive people away from Java (e.g. the great Ruby exodus) than the syntax itself.
mahmud 15y ago
We use Play at work. It's the only reason I use an Algol dialect after 10 years of writing Lisps. It and Android, to be frank. I believe we have one of the largest Play code bases. And I still enjoy it. I picked it out of a line up, I tested Django, Rails, Cake, Java EE and buncha other stuff. I had just a month to pick a platform and budget limits for 4 staff and 2 years. So far I only needed just a gfx designer and I still do all coding myself. Ask me anything about Play.
- zeemonkee 15y ago
  > It's the only reason I use an Algol dialect after 10 years of writing Lisps. Why not a Clojure stack ? Is Play itself, or Scala ?
  - mahmud 15y ago
    Java. I didn't do Clojure because I didn't know Java til this year. I last did C++ in 2002, closest language.
    - dmix 15y ago
      But you knew LISP before. Isn't that much more beneficial than knowing Java when doing Clojure?
      - mahmud 15y ago
        I'm one of those programmers that can't ignore the implementation language. I don't do 2nd-class languages without understanding their host environment fully.
- Egregore 15y ago
  Will you migrate your projects to 2.0 or will keep them with 1.2.* ?
  - mahmud 15y ago
    We'll move to 2.0 once crud, secure and search modules are there. I plan to keep up with upstream.
jiggy2011 15y ago
Play framework is a breath of fresh air compared to other Java frameworks. The only disadvantage I can see is that allot of the features to make things simpler do seem to more tightly couple you to it.
- mosburger 15y ago
  I think the overarching fear of tight coupling is what drove enterprise Java to the brink of madness. I blame people who got screwed by frameworks like EJB (pre-3) and Struts (pre-2.0). After the frustration of being "stuck" with these architectural decisions, the community did a 180 and went to excessively loose coupling and fear of inheritance. Now the complexity of frameworks like Spring and Hibernate drive people away from Java because setting up a simple website is such a chore. It seems like libraries like Play and Stripes aim for the middle ground that makes web platforms like Rails and Django so popular. Admittedly, they serve different audiences. It seems like frameworks like Play are better aimed at simple public websites and not "enterprise web services" or whatnot. And that's fine. </pointless-rambling>
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    Play framework uses hibernate + JPA under the hood (although you may be able to switch it for something else) but provides so much candy around it that it feels like using Doctrine or something. This isn't a bad thing as hibernate is an extremely powerful and complete ORM which I trust allot more than any of the half baked ones. If you want to use hibernate properly I recommend reading "Java Persistence with Hibernate" It explains the framework very well including the logic behind allot of the things that feel strange or over engineered with it.
mark_l_watson 15y ago
I just spent 20 minutes reading through the documentation and the changes look very good! I sometimes use Play for my own projects and I was very disappointed to not have been able to talk my largest customer into using Play when we kicked off two new projects 5 months ago. Oh well. Play makes Java (or Scala) web development a light and fun experience.
deutronium 15y ago
Will existing Play 1.x apps work on Play 2.0?
- Egregore 15y ago
  It seems no, but authors said that current 1.2.* version of play will be in maintenance mode for a long time, so it's safe to develop with 1.2.
gambo 15y ago
Wow these are really great news. Already used Play 1.2.3 and this was already amazing easy to work with. Working now with grails 1.3.7 and I definitely will change to Play after finishing my current project. Grails is a pain and it doesnt feel very light as its built uppon the spring stack which is huge. Using plugins is sometimes risky as they are outdated and you dont really understand what they are doing in the background. I also like the type safe approach of Scala/Java which you dont have in grails(groovy/java). This is also very useful for code completion in IDEs
eegilbert 15y ago
Bravo on launching day one with serious documentation.
robfig 15y ago
We use Play heavily at work (eg. 50k SLOC). I love it. However, I'm pretty nervous about 2.0, due to the tight coupling with Scala. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from trying to use Lift, and I did not care for sbt at all. While typesafe templates seem like a good thing, I can't recall ever having bugs that would have been caught by them, and it looks like it will eliminate the magical boilerplate-free parameter passing from the current version of Play.
- SkyMarshal 15y ago
  What turned you off of Lift?
  - robfig 15y ago
    In two full days of effort, I couldn't get a simple set of pages done. I found Play! right after that, and finished the pages completely painlessly in roughly no time. I would chalk it up to terrible terrible documentation, and being unable to read the example code that I did find due to the Scala practice of using random characters as method names. e.g. something = x % y %% z ||| a The documentation was really the worst, though. Maybe it's improved in the last year.
yalestar 15y ago
I dinked around with Play a while ago and was impressed all around. However, am I the only one who thinks it would benefit immensely from a better name? "Play" just makes it sound so... unrobust. It needs a name that conveys that it's industrial-strength. How about Chupacabra or Lugwrench or Nailgun or ...

90 points by lapusta 15y ago

Play's simplicity and its favouring of 'getting-shit-done'-attitude over the 'layering-and-overarchitecting'-attitude in the Java community has greatly benefited its rise. I really hope this type-safe Scala reimplementation of the framework pays off and is not a step backwards.

vetler 15y ago
Thankfully there are people who are working against the 'layering-and-overarchitecting'-attitude, but it takes time to get the message through.
erwanl 15y ago
We're still in line with our "no useless boilerplate" approach in Play 2.0. You can look at the samples and make up your own mind about whether we've been successful or not: https://github.com/playframework/Play20/tree/master/samples https://github.com/playframework/Play20/tree/master/samples
DanielRibeiro 15y ago
Well, they have had Scala support for quite a while: http://scala.playframework.org/ http://scala.playframework.org/
jiggy2011 15y ago
I hope there is still good support for us old folks who like our plain old Java!
stephen 15y ago
Agreed, I'm not going to say Java syntax is awesome (it's not), but I think the "over-architecting" attitude you mention has done far more to drive people away from Java (e.g. the great Ruby exodus) than the syntax itself.

mahmud 15y ago

We use Play at work. It's the only reason I use an Algol dialect after 10 years of writing Lisps. It and Android, to be frank. I believe we have one of the largest Play code bases. And I still enjoy it. I picked it out of a line up, I tested Django, Rails, Cake, Java EE and buncha other stuff. I had just a month to pick a platform and budget limits for 4 staff and 2 years. So far I only needed just a gfx designer and I still do all coding myself. Ask me anything about Play.

zeemonkee 15y ago
> It's the only reason I use an Algol dialect after 10 years of writing Lisps. Why not a Clojure stack ? Is Play itself, or Scala ?
- mahmud 15y ago
  Java. I didn't do Clojure because I didn't know Java til this year. I last did C++ in 2002, closest language.
  - dmix 15y ago
    But you knew LISP before. Isn't that much more beneficial than knowing Java when doing Clojure?
    - mahmud 15y ago
      I'm one of those programmers that can't ignore the implementation language. I don't do 2nd-class languages without understanding their host environment fully.
Egregore 15y ago
Will you migrate your projects to 2.0 or will keep them with 1.2.* ?
- mahmud 15y ago
  We'll move to 2.0 once crud, secure and search modules are there. I plan to keep up with upstream.

jiggy2011 15y ago

Play framework is a breath of fresh air compared to other Java frameworks. The only disadvantage I can see is that allot of the features to make things simpler do seem to more tightly couple you to it.

mosburger 15y ago
I think the overarching fear of tight coupling is what drove enterprise Java to the brink of madness. I blame people who got screwed by frameworks like EJB (pre-3) and Struts (pre-2.0). After the frustration of being "stuck" with these architectural decisions, the community did a 180 and went to excessively loose coupling and fear of inheritance. Now the complexity of frameworks like Spring and Hibernate drive people away from Java because setting up a simple website is such a chore. It seems like libraries like Play and Stripes aim for the middle ground that makes web platforms like Rails and Django so popular. Admittedly, they serve different audiences. It seems like frameworks like Play are better aimed at simple public websites and not "enterprise web services" or whatnot. And that's fine. </pointless-rambling>
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  Play framework uses hibernate + JPA under the hood (although you may be able to switch it for something else) but provides so much candy around it that it feels like using Doctrine or something. This isn't a bad thing as hibernate is an extremely powerful and complete ORM which I trust allot more than any of the half baked ones. If you want to use hibernate properly I recommend reading "Java Persistence with Hibernate" It explains the framework very well including the logic behind allot of the things that feel strange or over engineered with it.

mark_l_watson 15y ago

I just spent 20 minutes reading through the documentation and the changes look very good! I sometimes use Play for my own projects and I was very disappointed to not have been able to talk my largest customer into using Play when we kicked off two new projects 5 months ago. Oh well. Play makes Java (or Scala) web development a light and fun experience.

deutronium 15y ago

Will existing Play 1.x apps work on Play 2.0?

Egregore 15y ago
It seems no, but authors said that current 1.2.* version of play will be in maintenance mode for a long time, so it's safe to develop with 1.2.

gambo 15y ago

Wow these are really great news. Already used Play 1.2.3 and this was already amazing easy to work with. Working now with grails 1.3.7 and I definitely will change to Play after finishing my current project. Grails is a pain and it doesnt feel very light as its built uppon the spring stack which is huge. Using plugins is sometimes risky as they are outdated and you dont really understand what they are doing in the background. I also like the type safe approach of Scala/Java which you dont have in grails(groovy/java). This is also very useful for code completion in IDEs

eegilbert 15y ago

Bravo on launching day one with serious documentation.

robfig 15y ago

We use Play heavily at work (eg. 50k SLOC). I love it. However, I'm pretty nervous about 2.0, due to the tight coupling with Scala. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from trying to use Lift, and I did not care for sbt at all. While typesafe templates seem like a good thing, I can't recall ever having bugs that would have been caught by them, and it looks like it will eliminate the magical boilerplate-free parameter passing from the current version of Play.

SkyMarshal 15y ago
What turned you off of Lift?
- robfig 15y ago
  In two full days of effort, I couldn't get a simple set of pages done. I found Play! right after that, and finished the pages completely painlessly in roughly no time. I would chalk it up to terrible terrible documentation, and being unable to read the example code that I did find due to the Scala practice of using random characters as method names. e.g. something = x % y %% z ||| a The documentation was really the worst, though. Maybe it's improved in the last year.

yalestar 15y ago

I dinked around with Play a while ago and was impressed all around. However, am I the only one who thinks it would benefit immensely from a better name? "Play" just makes it sound so... unrobust. It needs a name that conveys that it's industrial-strength. How about Chupacabra or Lugwrench or Nailgun or ...