Lift is a Scala web framework. Its creator is none other than the mighty David Pollak, a man who was a mature programmer when I was a newborn infant.
It combines many of the best ideas from other web frameworks. It’s at the point where it’s small enough to be manageable but large enough to be featureful. Now is the perfect time to get in on it.
The problem is that it until about a week ago, my computer couldn’t even handle Lift, I didn’t have enough RAM. That problem has been solved.
But I still don’t have a clue about Maven and the other Java components Scala depends on which I don’t think David even realizes are nontrivial to learn. (They are trivial if you are David Pollak.)
And besides, Lucene is too awesome to pass up.
So, the first step is getting comfortable with Java web programming.
To do this, I am going to create a wiki/PIM type product that is more or less a Backpack ripoff. It will start as a trivial wiki, with Backpack-type features added later. Here are some features that are essential:
- Fulltext search. This is an essential feature of all modern data-driven applications. Lucene will do the job.
- Version control. I insist on knowing who changed what and when on pretty much any digital artifact I work on on computers these days, even binary assets like Photoshop files.
- Simplicity. It must be beyond braindead simple to jot down quick notes, as simple as it is to type in a query to Google.
- Responsiveness. I fucking hate slow software! Unfortunately we will have to dirty our hands with JavaScript in order to carry out nice Ajax stuff. I hate Ajax hype more than anyone I know, but it’s simply a fact that client-side scripting is the way to make excellent, responsive web applications.
In order to make this tractable, Internet Explorer compatibility is entirely optional, and I’m not going to waste my spare time on it.
Probably mobile access is important but I barely ever use cell phones.
The book I’m going to be working through is a recent release from APress: Beginning JSP, JSF and Tomcat Web Development: From Novice to Professional.
Let the games begin.
Warren… thanks for the undeserved praise.
Just a couple of things. I know very little about Maven. There have been some other folks who have put together the maven scripts. All I know how to do is the following:
// clean out my project
mvn clean:clean
// create an installable WAR file
mvn install
// create all the files necessary to have an importable Eclipse project
mvn eclipse:eclipse
// run the project locally with Jetty
mvn jetty:run
In terms of knowing Tomcat, I know that if I take the WAR file in target/project.war and drop it in Tomcat’s webapps directory, start tomcat and point my browser to localhost:8080/project I’ll get my running project.
That’s the depth of my Tomcat and Maven skillz and it didn’t require XML
Thanks,
David
Comment by David Pollak — November 29, 2007 @ 7:17 am |
Just how far did you get in this endeavor?
Comment by Randin — August 25, 2008 @ 11:55 pm |