What's the Future of Lift framework and current work being done?

Question

I keep reading the developments being done on frameworks like Grails and other Java frameworks but not much of a buzz in the Lift camp. And also Lift 1.0 was announced long back. Is the community working on Lift framework? What are the future prospects of the framework? Is it better than Grails and other Java frameworks? (Groovy being less performing than Scala).

Answer 1

From the little I read recently, Lift 1.1 should probably be out before Scala 2.8. As in, real soon now. There is a lot of activity on the Lift front, but they really do seem to be a bit more insular than other projects. I hear way more about Akka than about Lift, which I find really surprising. In fact, I hear way more about the general support of the Lift community for non-Lift Scala projects than I hear about Lift itself.

It's not that they aren't receptive and newbie-friendly or anything like that. I think it is just a matter of not having many personalities that are talkative about what they do, or, perhaps, those personalities are just in completely different circles than the ones I follow on the Internet.

It does bother me a bit that they don't have anyone strong here on Stack Overflow. If you compare the answers from Scala related question to those of Scala & Lift related questions, the difference is striking.

Update Nov 16, 2010

Just to update, Lift 2.0 was released and only works with Scala 2.7.7. Lift 2.1 followed it, though, and is available for both 2.7.7 and 2.8.0 (I suppose it works with 2.8.1 as well, but I haven't tested that). Beyond that, there's already a milestone available for Lift 2.2, so everything is going just fine.

Answer 2

I'm on the lift list, and get quite a few emails per day. Quite a lot of interesting discussions, and M8 just rolled out.
So, in addition to the mailing list, looking at the wiki, and the github repository you'll find all kinds of stuff.

Answer 3

There's a very active mailing list for lift. Perhaps you could peruse its archives and send an inquiry there if you're not satisfied with what you find.

Answer 4

I've some experience with Grails and looked at Lift recently, but I find the programming model of lift somewhat strange and unintuitive. I'd prefer Scala over Groovy, but I'd choose Grails though (which has a Scala plug-in). Grails offers much more than Lift does. Grails is developed by SpringSource whereas no big company is behind Lift.

If you simply want to develop web applications choose Grails. If you're a Scala enthusiast go with Lift.