Re: Is ECS project still alive?

> ECS was created when servlets were the main technology for creating  
> web
> pages.  At that time, ECS was an alternative for hard-coding HTML  
> in your
> servlets.  Now we have JSPs, XML to XLST, frameworks such as Cocoon,
> Tapestry, Wicket., MyFaces, etc  With ECS you are still coding your  
> HTML
> in your servlets which is a maintenance nightmare.

Doing direct HTML coding in small easy-to-understand servlets makes  
sense for smaller projects. It especially makes sense for in-house  
projects where you are focused on providing access to data, not  
trying to impress the world with your Web 2.0 features and magazine- 
style CSS layouts.

If you are building the next Amazon.com, then yes, you may need the  
heft of a framework.

Those of us writing simple reports for in-house use would much rather  
whip up some simple servlets than spend weeks studying some  
framework's source-code, miles of email archives, and obscure bug- 
reports.

We might also find debugging to be much simpler when tracing through  
our own code and a few calls to ECS rather than a mountain of  
framework code.

> The development
> community has moved on to MVC frameworks.

Make that "some of" the development community.

ECS specifically died because anyone who expresses an interest gets  
slapped down with a condescending attitude that "only idiots and  
children do direct HTML coding, all the cool kids use endlessly  
complicated, gnarly frameworks with 18-layers of abstraction." Plus  
they offer the bonus feature of endless revising and re-architecting.  
And then eventually that framework fades away as the new framework-du- 
jour takes its place.

This framework mania may be the reason why so many developers have  
fled Java, and are running to PHP, Ruby on Rails, M$, etc.

My advice:

- If ECS works for you, use it. Get your work done, go home, kiss the  
spouse, walk the dog.

- If you get tired of the snobby framework retorts, start a similar  
project of your own somewhere else in cyberspace.

--Basil Bourque