Matt Raible on web frameworks

Matt Raible has a fascinating video comparing web frameworks. Comparisons are tricky since frameworks are changing rapidly, with multiple releases per year. However, he makes an interesting aside about the (lack of) value of visual IDEs. JSF comes with a drag-and-drop IDE that is "appealing to managers", but "if one wants to develop anything substantial, we're going to have to get down and dirty with the code."

I've been espousing a code-based approach for speech applications for while. Indeed that's the whole premise of the SpeakRight framework. Any substantial app will use dynamically generated code, and not be pages of handwritten markup text.

Things are a bit simpler for speech applications. The following criteria for comparing web frameworks don't apply

• Bookmarkable URLs.
• Avoiding the double-POST problem
• AJAX
• Massive scalability. Web applications may involve millions of users but speech apps are still orders of magnitude smaller.
• Page decoration. The vast topic of graphical design doesn't exist in a speech app. Persona is as close as one gets to "decoration".