Our team has used JSF for the better part of a year. My vote: skip it. Check out the first of a long list of reasons why the JSF 7-layer burrito won’t be on my round for seconds.
In this podcast, I stick close to our experiences with JSF as a team, and my opinions on it. If you’d like to read stuff others have read about it, a couple searches should put you smack in the middle of a debate.
If you’re looking for information on the REST architecture I talked about in the podcast, you can get the short version from a third party, or the original dissertation from Roy Fielding.
Download JSF Part 1.
UPDATE: This page has been read more than twice my average (though the number of podcast downloads are still normal — is anyone new actually listening?). In anticipation of more podcast episodes to come, I’ve posted a more complete list of the things that made be decide I’d like to avoid JSF in the future.
UPDATE 2: Part two of the series is now posted.
FINAL UPDATE:The third and final part of the series is now posted.
January 19th, 2006 at 08:57
Thanks for the info, and like to hear (or read) more about the other related issues with JSF.
and after JSF, what other framework you would like to use ?
I am just started with Tapestry (coming with some WebObject background). I know you did not think there were enough following on Tapestry a year ago, what do you think of Tapestry now ?
January 19th, 2006 at 10:31
Well, I agree. I’ve found over that last year that I can do everything both struts and jsf do with my own jsp tags. I skip the xml, I skip the page mapping, the form creation, and in general, just do the plain ol work with a few tags to help out and walla… all the functionality in a fraction the time, effort and of course, lines of code. Oh yeah.. I can do the I18n without the reloading and the property files too.
January 19th, 2006 at 15:53
Just heard the first podcast of 2006. Curious, will you go back to using Struts?
January 20th, 2006 at 09:06
Echo2 is THE WAY …
January 20th, 2006 at 14:18
Wow, nice job on the podcast. You sounded a little unsure of yourself, but you really nailed JSF to the wall for all the right RESTful reasons.
February 9th, 2006 at 19:35
[...] JSF: The 7-Layer Burrito I Won’t Eat Again [...]
March 20th, 2006 at 20:05
NFJS - Day 2
As much as I wanted to get this posted, you know, Saturday, I just didn’t have time. After the birds of a feather, I spent a good bit of time chatting with Justin Gehtland about Ajax, Ruby, and Mac tricks so my whole evening was delayed. Of co…
March 28th, 2006 at 17:29
Thank you for this podcast. You also talked about Tapestry and Spring MVC (Web Flow). How do you evaluate these frameworks in relation JSF. If one needs to make a decision about the direction to go to, are they good altrenatives to JSF?