4 ms·

It's a polyglot world after all - Lift adding support for JRuby

50 points by icey 16y ago

gregwebs 16y ago
Very cool! When I first saw this I thought it was going to be about Lift developers being able to use ruby code- there are a lot of Ruby packages out there that they could benefit from using. Just from looking at Scala, it seems like a superior language, and from looking at Lift it seems like a well done web framework. However, a lot of the benefit of Rails comes from the ecosystem where there is a plugin for your every need. I doubt that Lift can offer enough benefits to offset that. Maybe they can use this for their pattern matching: https://github.com/waves/functor https://github.com/waves/functor
- LiveTheDream 16y ago
  Interesting that you say Lift developers could benefit from Ruby packages; generally a big pro for Lift/Scala is access the the multitude of Java packages. JRuby, Scala, Clojure and other JVM languages all benefit from that ecosystem.
noelwelsh 16y ago
As someone who uses Lift (in addition to other frameworks) I'm a bit surprised by this decision. Lift is at the state where it is just getting the features and docs to be useful to a wider audience. Scala adoption is rising. It seems David Pollak is going for the corporate market and I don't think this is the right focus at this stage of Lift's development.
- therockhead 16y ago
  Is Ruby making inroads in the corporate market?
  - noelwelsh 16y ago
    I think so. Thoughtworks, who are a straight-up corporate consultancy, have done Ruby since 2006. Ruby is certainly further along the adoption curve than Scala, so perhaps DPP is trying to leapfrog over the adoption of Scala by adding JRuby support. However, IMO Scala is not what is holding Lift back -- it's lack of decent documentation. Just read the other comments on this post...
    - bguthrie 16y ago
      I've been doing Rails work at ThoughtWorks for more than three years now. Judging from the projects I've been on, Ruby has achieved a fair amount of penetration with the Fortune 500 crowd. Whether that's expanding, topped off, or contracting, I can't judge.
  - cageface 16y ago
    My personal impression, backed by no real data, is that Ruby adoption has tapered off somewhat. Python and PHP web frameworks have absorbed the innovations of Rails and the subjective advantages of Ruby as a language over either aren't enough to close the gap. I wouldn't say that Ruby or Rails are dying but it also doesn't seem to me that they've achieved escape velocity either.
barrydahlberg 16y ago
Lift is hands-down the best web framework available today... Can someone a little less involved please comment on the validity of this and the claims that follow it? Is it something I should be checking out?
- vladev 16y ago
  I've tried using it a few months ago. It's quite hard actually. The docs were poor, understanding the concepts was not easy and in a lot of places it abuses the Scala syntax: LiftRules.rewrite.append { case RewriteRequest(ParsePath(List("shopInfo", "view", id), _, _, _), _, _) => RewriteResponse("shopInfo" :: "view" :: Nil, Map("id" -> id)) My opinion is that I don't like. At all! There are better and simpler ways to do things, even the real-time chats they brag about (socket.io, anyone?).
  - KirinDave 16y ago
    One of the things I asked dpp for was a real introduction. He's very excited to talk about Lift's comet stuff (and it's easily the best comet impl you can ask for), but in the process he sort of leaves people who just wanted to get "hello world" up on the browser behind. He's doing a round of lift classes, so hopefully some of that material will migrate to the website and make lift more approachable.
    - sorenbs 16y ago
      The video from the first Lift training is available here: http://vimeo.com/groups/75631/videos http://vimeo.com/groups/75631/videos (skip the first 14 mins). It covers what you need to get started with Lift.
      - KirinDave 16y ago
        That's great, and the content seems good, but I still feel like a 2-hour video is sort of a glib response to "there is no good introduction to the framework!" :)
      - deleted 16y ago

50 points by icey 16y ago

Very cool! When I first saw this I thought it was going to be about Lift developers being able to use ruby code- there are a lot of Ruby packages out there that they could benefit from using. Just from looking at Scala, it seems like a superior language, and from looking at Lift it seems like a well done web framework. However, a lot of the benefit of Rails comes from the ecosystem where there is a plugin for your every need. I doubt that Lift can offer enough benefits to offset that. Maybe they can use this for their pattern matching: https://github.com/waves/functor https://github.com/waves/functor

LiveTheDream 16y ago
Interesting that you say Lift developers could benefit from Ruby packages; generally a big pro for Lift/Scala is access the the multitude of Java packages. JRuby, Scala, Clojure and other JVM languages all benefit from that ecosystem.

noelwelsh 16y ago

As someone who uses Lift (in addition to other frameworks) I'm a bit surprised by this decision. Lift is at the state where it is just getting the features and docs to be useful to a wider audience. Scala adoption is rising. It seems David Pollak is going for the corporate market and I don't think this is the right focus at this stage of Lift's development.

therockhead 16y ago
Is Ruby making inroads in the corporate market?
- noelwelsh 16y ago
  I think so. Thoughtworks, who are a straight-up corporate consultancy, have done Ruby since 2006. Ruby is certainly further along the adoption curve than Scala, so perhaps DPP is trying to leapfrog over the adoption of Scala by adding JRuby support. However, IMO Scala is not what is holding Lift back -- it's lack of decent documentation. Just read the other comments on this post...
  - bguthrie 16y ago
    I've been doing Rails work at ThoughtWorks for more than three years now. Judging from the projects I've been on, Ruby has achieved a fair amount of penetration with the Fortune 500 crowd. Whether that's expanding, topped off, or contracting, I can't judge.
- cageface 16y ago
  My personal impression, backed by no real data, is that Ruby adoption has tapered off somewhat. Python and PHP web frameworks have absorbed the innovations of Rails and the subjective advantages of Ruby as a language over either aren't enough to close the gap. I wouldn't say that Ruby or Rails are dying but it also doesn't seem to me that they've achieved escape velocity either.

barrydahlberg 16y ago

Lift is hands-down the best web framework available today... Can someone a little less involved please comment on the validity of this and the claims that follow it? Is it something I should be checking out?

vladev 16y ago
I've tried using it a few months ago. It's quite hard actually. The docs were poor, understanding the concepts was not easy and in a lot of places it abuses the Scala syntax: LiftRules.rewrite.append { case RewriteRequest(ParsePath(List("shopInfo", "view", id), _, _, _), _, _) => RewriteResponse("shopInfo" :: "view" :: Nil, Map("id" -> id)) My opinion is that I don't like. At all! There are better and simpler ways to do things, even the real-time chats they brag about (socket.io, anyone?).
- KirinDave 16y ago
  One of the things I asked dpp for was a real introduction. He's very excited to talk about Lift's comet stuff (and it's easily the best comet impl you can ask for), but in the process he sort of leaves people who just wanted to get "hello world" up on the browser behind. He's doing a round of lift classes, so hopefully some of that material will migrate to the website and make lift more approachable.
  - sorenbs 16y ago
    The video from the first Lift training is available here: http://vimeo.com/groups/75631/videos http://vimeo.com/groups/75631/videos (skip the first 14 mins). It covers what you need to get started with Lift.
    - KirinDave 16y ago
      That's great, and the content seems good, but I still feel like a 2-hour video is sort of a glib response to "there is no good introduction to the framework!" :)
    - deleted 16y ago