Is Struts Dying?

[Paul Benedict <pa...@yahoo.com>]

The subject line asks it all. Is it true?

I hope we see a version 1.2.8 and a 1.3 soon, but I am
sorry to see all the innovation going into Spring
(YEAH!) and Shale (YAWN!), with no one really wanting
to continue growing the classic framework.

Is it viable to evolve Struts Classic into Shale, and
mix into the Shale source support for good old Struts?
I say it sounds like a good idea to me.... but I hope
there are better ideas than mine, or we'd all be in
trouble ;-)

With that said, this is my opinion based on
observation of the amazing industry progression in the
MVC area. I hope the Struts committers aren't burnt
out. I love Struts which is why I ask this tough
question. I hope I get some good news and be told I am
wrong :)

Thanks!
Paul


		
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[FIRDAY] Re : Is Struts Dying?

[Leon Rosenberg <st...@anotheria.net>]

> 
> The only reason for Struts to improve is keeping Front 
> controller aka web MVC as a cornerstone pattern.


The other reason is, that we all love struts just too much to let it die.

Btw, is anyone working on improvements of the struts-taglibs (logic and
bean)?

Regards
Leon 



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Re: Is Struts Dying?

[Michael Jouravlev <jm...@gmail.com>]

On 8/25/05, Paul Benedict <pa...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The subject line asks it all. Is it true?

Once again? Man, you should have used [FRIDAY] prefix ;-) Tomorrow's
Friday anyway. The short answer is the question: is servlet API dead?
Do people still program to bare servlet API?

> I hope we see a version 1.2.8 and a 1.3 soon, but I am
> sorry to see all the innovation going into Spring
> (YEAH!) and Shale (YAWN!), with no one really wanting
> to continue growing the classic framework.

There is Struts Ti (a lot of new stuff), my very own Struts Dialogs
(just two action classes and a different mindset using existing
codebase) http://struts.sourceforge.net/strutsdialogs, and other
developments.

> Is it viable to evolve Struts Classic into Shale, and
> mix into the Shale source support for good old Struts?
> I say it sounds like a good idea to me.... but I hope
> there are better ideas than mine, or we'd all be in
> trouble ;-)

Currently Shale targets JSF as view technology, so unless Shale starts
to support JSPs and Struts taglibs, Shale cannot be considered as
evolution of Struts.

> With that said, this is my opinion based on
> observation of the amazing industry progression in the
> MVC area.

Would not call it amazing, seeing something like this:
http://forum.springframework.org/viewtopic.php?t=4200 ;-))
Or are you talking about Microsoft, which adds first-class support for
Front Controller pattern into ASP.NET 2.0?

> I hope the Struts committers aren't burnt
> out. I love Struts which is why I ask this tough
> question. I hope I get some good news and be told I am
> wrong :)

The problem is, if you like Struts the way it is, you will not be
happy with any radical changes, see DJ has split to Spring MVC. If you
do not like Struts way of doing things and the word "Struts" make you
puke, you will more likely jump to JSF/Shale/Tapestry/Wicket/etc right
now. Basically, Struts is screwed ;-)

I believe that the only way for further Struts Classic development is
to use different approaches within current codebase. This is what I
did with my Struts Dialogs. Basically, only one new action and a
different request lifecycle.

Struts is a wrapper over servlet API, kinda like MFC. I prefer it to
stay this way, so I could use something relatively small and fast to
build a small app (or if I wanted to put a lot of handcoding ;-) ).
Struts cannot compete against JSF or Wicket or Tapestry in prototyping
speed or in number of services it provides.

On the other hand, what do you do if you want to use Front Controller
framework? Switch to WebWork and Spring MVC, or to improve Struts?

The only reason for Struts to improve is keeping Front controller aka
web MVC as a cornerstone pattern.

Michael.

On 8/25/05, Paul Benedict <pa...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The subject line asks it all. Is it true?
> 
> I hope we see a version 1.2.8 and a 1.3 soon, but I am
> sorry to see all the innovation going into Spring
> (YEAH!) and Shale (YAWN!), with no one really wanting
> to continue growing the classic framework.
> 
> Is it viable to evolve Struts Classic into Shale, and
> mix into the Shale source support for good old Struts?
> I say it sounds like a good idea to me.... but I hope
> there are better ideas than mine, or we'd all be in
> trouble ;-)
> 
> With that said, this is my opinion based on
> observation of the amazing industry progression in the
> MVC area. I hope the Struts committers aren't burnt
> out. I love Struts which is why I ask this tough
> question. I hope I get some good news and be told I am
> wrong :)
> 
> Thanks!
> Paul
> 
> 
> 
> ____________________________________________________
> Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
> http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
> 
> 
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: user-unsubscribe@struts.apache.org
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>

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Re: Is Struts Dying?

[Craig McClanahan <cr...@gmail.com>]

On 8/25/05, Paul Benedict <pa...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The subject line asks it all. Is it true?
> 

Like a lot of journalism nowdays :-(, the subject line (and the
thinking behind it) presumes that the real world is binary in its
response to changing conditions.  That is decidedly not the case --
indeed, I would likely contend that the real world response isn't even
responsive to *analog* (versus digital) design analysis -- it's much
more fractal than that.

(Translation, if you want a short answer that lets you skip the rest
of this response -- there is no such thing as a single answer to this
kind of question, so it's pretty useless to debate what that answer
might be.)

> I hope we see a version 1.2.8 and a 1.3 soon, but I am
> sorry to see all the innovation going into Spring
> (YEAH!) and Shale (YAWN!), with no one really wanting
> to continue growing the classic framework.

Whatever you think of Shale, you're totally naive if you believe
nobody cares about Struts Classic -- no matter what the development
activity level at any point of time might be.  Besides the efforts
going into the 1.3 refactoring train, think outside the box for a
minute.  Even if Struts Classic development stopped *totally*, would
that impact the fact that there are *thousands* of existing apps
dependent on these APIs.  Those apps do not go away simply because
some new framework comes along and has cool new ideas.  The needs of
the developers of those apps need to be paid attention to ... and the
Struts community is responding to those needs.

> 
> Is it viable to evolve Struts Classic into Shale, and
> mix into the Shale source support for good old Struts?
> I say it sounds like a good idea to me.... but I hope
> there are better ideas than mine, or we'd all be in
> trouble ;-)
> 

Actually, I'm coming to the conclusion that this is not *necessarily*
a good idea.

The basic ideas that drove the development of Struts were formed a
little over five years ago.  (OK, to be precise, I typed the original
Struts 0.x code into my laptop over a vacation at the Oregon coast in
May 2000, much to the chagrin of my wife, but after 31 years together
she's started to get the idea of who I am and what I do :-).  The
world of web development has changed *dramatically* in that amount of
time ... so one common viewpoint is that (negatively expressed) Struts
Classic is dead.  But another viewpoint should be "shouldn't the
Struts community evolve Struts to take advantage of everything the
world has learned since then?"

If I were a Struts user, I would be *really* unhappy if the Struts
developers were not paying attention to what is going on in the world.

What happens to Struts itself, however, is only part of a broader
picture.  The world has definitely come up with some better (and, in
some cases *much* better -- think about the fact that this is the very
creator of Struts telling you this) ideas.  How should the Struts
community react?

I believe that *all* of the following responses are appropriate:

* Continue to maintain and enhance a kind of Struts that is
  fundamentally backwards compatible, thus protecting the
  investment people have made in both understanding Struts APIs,
  and the fact that nobody can afford to convert all their existing
  apps, all at once, to the "greatest thing since sliced bread" today.
  Struts 1.3.x is doing this.

* Embrace an integration with new technologies as they emerge,
  without changing the underlying nature of the platform.  Struts has
  demonstrated that it likes this path -- look at what happened when
  JSTL 1.0 was released.  The new capabilities were leveraged,
  the existing tags were given a new lease on life (struts-el), and
  the world got better for Struts users.

* Recognize that five years, in Internet time, is an infinity -- eventually,
  some other technology is going to obsolete you.  Given that this
  is *absolutely certain* to occur, does the Struts community choose
  to provide to their users a path to take advantage of what has now
  become possible, or do they act like ostriches and assume everyone
  should extend Action and ActionForm now until the end of time.

> With that said, this is my opinion based on
> observation of the amazing industry progression in the
> MVC area. I hope the Struts committers aren't burnt
> out. I love Struts which is why I ask this tough
> question. I hope I get some good news and be told I am
> wrong :)
> 

As I said at the beginning, the world is not simplistic enough for
binary answers like "you are right" or "you are wrong".  Yes, Struts
Classic is evolving.  Yes, there is a way to integrate new mainstream
technologies with Struts Classic (the struts-faces integration
library).  Yes, the Struts community is actively developing (more than
one) possible successors to Struts Classic.

Given that successors to Struts Classic are *guaranteed* to emerge,
would you rather have them come from the Struts community (who might
actually care about providing transition paths) or not?

Of course, the whole response above assumes that readers understand
that the motivations driving open source developers to do what they do
are the same as what drives programmers working for a company to do
what they do.  If you don't understand that difference, you are
*never* going to have a clear understanding of how development of open
source technologies is fundamentally different -- none of the
perceptions you might traditionally have of your own company's geeks
actually apply here.

> Thanks!
> Paul

Craig McClanahan

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