Ask HN: Scala web devs, describe your stack

21 points by arkitaip ↗ HN
How does web programming in Scala look like? Which stack is used? What kind of issues are you experiencing with frameworks like Play?

3 comments

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Play 2.1 here. Scala for web dev is awesome. Other than I don't like Anorm, no issues with Play.
First its recommended to have sbt installed. Also, I love giter8 which lets you setup your project structure layout like a snap.

Play is an awesome MVC framework inspired by Rails, so if your background is Ruby on Rails you'll love Play.

Recently, I developed an API using LiftWeb which is a lightweight full-stack web framework. It has many features that you may not find in other Scala frameworks like Comet and ajax support.

I dont have experience with developing UI with Lift, but the API I designed using Lift's net.liftweb.http._ can handle more than any application I developed using Ruby.

On the other hand, if you want a solid Database library, I used Squeryl and Slick, and for MongoDB: Rogue by Foursquare.

Our stack Play 2.1, MongoDb and we use Lift mongo driver and Rogue DSL. I use incremental run (~run) when developing and can attach Intellij IDEA debugger so it's usually a pleasure to develop. In general IDEA's Play plugin is rather helpful. Sometimes I would like to add more conventions to Play (for routing, data binding) but that's probably because of my previous experience with Rails. Static typing is a good assistance when you develop something with non-trivial logics. Community is not as large as for say Rails, Django and sometimes I missed plugins (say for Hogan.js).