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Glad to see the votes. But, please do give comments if you are giving negative votes (or positive votes). If you don't agree with this perspective, I would love to hear why. :-)

Spring Framework is more strong than ever, We are basing all our development using Spring Framework and JBoss AS Java EE infrastructures. Play Framework is nice with Scala but is just a front end solution you will need to use Akka and friends to create an infrastructure. It is nice but still not there as mature as the Java EE and Spring. So please stop saying Spring is declining thats not true!!, this I feel is a just an author rant for their technology of choice.

I agree that Spring Framework is doing well. I was just pointing to its big problem. Spring used to be my technology of choice. And in many situations it still is. But it has a number of challenges, as I mentioned in the post.

Spring peaked years ago in the 2000's, might simpler solutions are the norm these days with Python, Scala, Ruby, Play etc.

Can you formulate on that?, Spring 3.1 its very simple to use for example a controller with Spring MVC and annotations:

  you want the repository here is it: [code class="java"] public interface UserRepository extends JpaRepository { } [/code>  And thats it Spring Data ROCKS, And the model is just a POJO with setter and getters nothing special, what more simple could be this? by the way for template I use FreeMarker is very easy to use and more powerful than django template. People that said Java and frameworks are difficult to use and blah blah blah they are just saying BS. Rod is my mentor and I love his books and everything but if Rod joins typesafe does not mean Spring is done and the next thing is Typesafe thats another BS really.

				
			

Dzone have to update the editor with something more modern is useless to type code here and demonstrate things.

DZONE dont give a damn to what its users think so "SHUT UP" is what they expect from you, its the same from every website that has ties with illuminati investors

Anyway my point is Java with Spring 3.1 is simple as Python with django

I posted this in response to one of the comments on the post: If you get a developer with no experience in Java coding and ask him to build a web app using Play Framework vs ‘the right Spring Framework’ – I can bet you good money that the Play Framework example will be up in almost 1/10th the time. Again, this is however besides the point. The challenge with the above paragraph and the challenges that I was facing is the same: It is hard to use only one Spring Framework. I have not built a Django app, I was trying to compare Spring back in the days vs now and comparing with regards to other frameworks.

20+ comments here now, but every time i asked the BAFoons here in Dzone "What is SPRING ?" for many many years, they never reply, so they themselves killed SPRING, Poor greedy selfish Loosers ;-)

The author talks some BS about modularity and concludes that Spring is in decline. Spring is a benchmark for framework modularity. You can use exactly as much of it as you want, regardless from the environment. I even have used the IOC module in desktop JavaSE applications.. ,

I did actually explicitly mention that Spring's problem is not modularity. However, that does not mean that using Spring Social (the example I used in my post), does not require me to use other parts of the Spring Frameworks like Spring DI.

Spring is a breeze to use and it gets easier and easier on every release. There's nothing out there beating it. It's stronger than ever, used everywhere and with a vibrant ecosystem of developments around it. I'm fed up with this bashing of technologies just to get a lot of page hits.

Did you even read my post? I my seriously tired of people just putting up random good points of Spring. I completely agree with your plus points of Spring. However, the problem that I was talking about has been overshadowing that plus points.

Anyone who thinks building a Spring web application (on Tomcat) is easy should try Dropwizard IMO. Having just one config file to maintain for your entire deployment rather than my-context.xml, my-servlet.xml, web.xml, myapp-.properties, server.xml etc. is a huge benefit. Spring's issue is that it has become the thing it was supposed to be in opposition to i.e. loads of XML config, creating tight coupling by having to extend framework classes and interfaces all over the place (sound familiar?). And like JSP it provides you with too many ways to solve the same problem (i.e. is too unopinionated), leading to lots of accidental complexity on larger projects.

WTF are you talking about, with Spring you just need one xml file if you opt for the xml approach, people spread the xml with context and servlet just to organize but does not need that and with Spring 3.1+ almost all can do just with Java and annotations, if you are using servlet 3.0 spec even you dont need web.xml. Java with Spring 3+ is easy as anything out there, people that said the contrary is ignorant or people just ranting/zealots/ trolls or whatever.

I do not want to argue which is better or not, but my two cents is that you should look at the whole rather than the minor details. For me Spring provides better ability to maintain my application as it progress and mature. Again this is just my experience :)

> Better ability to maintain Perhaps you could elaborate on what makes it easier to maintain vs something like Play?

these people have lost it, just because they think spring did better than last version, it just means spring became better for those who already knew it, not for those newbie who dont have a clue what spring is (except that its used in car seats and some sofas)

I would have agreed with you a few years ago. But today this one 'minor' detail has grown to become the challenge that we didn't use Spring in our previous web app. And primarily because it hurts the application maintainability (as it forces me to think in 'the spring way').

Typo in my previous comment (not sure how to edit it): I am less worried about something that forces me to think in a certain way, and more worried about something that forces future code maintainers to think in a certain way.

Well in my situation, from the perspective of hiring, i am able to find quality people who know Spring rather than any other framework which in turn means faster turnaround time to be productive. The issue i see is the way you have titled your post. You cant just say "Decline" just because you do not like it anymore. You got to back that up with numerical statistics in order to be convincing. That is just how i saw it. Again i do not want to say you are wrong, im sure you had your trade offs to consider going for other frameworks, but that does not mean Spring is on the decline :)

Obviously many SPRING professionals are being jobless, so you find new employees immediately.

Very hard statement, again with no backing up with facts :)

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dream on dreamer http://www.dzone.com/links/tsunami_of_scala_frameworks.html :-p

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ThinkTank I thought you ware banned from Dzone?, You cant hide my friend, your style of writing and your trolling who could forget that ROFL.

Well looking at the discussion I would say that this is an issue where a newbie cannot understand the spring but a pro could. Well come on guys what do you expect a person having no knowledge to come out of the blue and get all the concepts behind it right. May be you try to say the extent for which it supports the development has made it complicated, well I believe may be you are not seeing the big picture on how the framework has brought together and mitigated the pain points of the developers, But all in all its only ones opinion, but I believe you are wrong in saying it in decline :) ,

I do also C# ASP.Net MVC/Razor, Entity Framework, I use Unity for DI, Repository pattern, UnitOfWork etc I compare it with Spring MVC/Freemarker, Spring DI, Spring Data and Hibernate/JPA2, and both of the technologies are similar, I do Python with Django sometime and with the three techs I see the same productivity the only difference is 2 languages are static the other is dynamic it just a small switch and I think Play with Scala is in the same productivity meter so I dont see where is the difficult or the decline of Spring with Java. Really I will say it again it is just BS.

Wow, what's up with all the down votes? It's a good post even if you disagree with him.