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POWhat are the main differences between the popular web frameworks?
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copied!<p>There are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_application_frameworks" rel="noreferrer">lots of web application frameworks</a> available these days, for pretty much every language out there. In your experience, what are their strengths, weaknesses, and unique features? Assuming the luxury of choice, what factors would lead you to consider one over another other?</p> <p>I'm most interested in people's direct experience with one or more frameworks, rather than an exhaustive comparison of everything out there. Hopefully the SO community has programmers who have good and bad experiences with things like <a href="http://www.rubyonrails.org/" rel="noreferrer">Rails</a>, <a href="http://www.asp.net" rel="noreferrer">ASP.NET</a>, <a href="http://www.djangoproject.com/" rel="noreferrer">Django</a>, <a href="http://turbogears.org/" rel="noreferrer">TurboGears</a>, or <a href="http://java.sun.com/javaee/javaserverfaces/" rel="noreferrer">JSF</a>. It would also be great to hear if anyone is using one of the less mainstream frameworks like <a href="http://www.seaside.st/" rel="noreferrer">Seaside</a> or <a href="http://common-lisp.net/project/cl-weblocks/" rel="noreferrer">Weblocks</a>.</p> <p>Programming language is an obvious difference, but a Java vs Ruby flamewar won't be much fun, and most of these frameworks seem to be at least as much an investment in technology, tools and complexity as their language of choice; so I'm more interested in things like:</p> <ul> <li>Development speed and convenience</li> <li>Barriers to entry - both in terms of developer training, and of infrastructure needed</li> <li>Lock-in - how much code could you keep if you had to switch frameworks?</li> <li>Flexibility - does the framework dictate your architecture or design? (Whether that would be a good or bad thing is probably best left to a separate discussion.)</li> <li>Performance, scalability, and stability - obviously depending on the developers!</li> </ul>

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