Home/ Questions/Q 4075152
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-20T17:15:40+00:00

I have recently been learning Scala in my personal time. At work, I have

  • 0

I have recently been learning Scala in my personal time. At work, I have been learning C#/.NET (4.0). I am not deeply familiar enough with either to be able to more than minimally evaluate either Lift or ASP-MVC 3. I’m at a crossroads. And given my very limited time, I must choose between one or the other to learn and build an application over the next 3-6 months.

I came across this Lift article today and I immediately was intrigued. I have attempted most of the things outlined in the article causing me endless hours of frustration and headaches. And some of which I eventually gave up and implemented crude unsafe simple versions just to get the projects completed. So, this article made Scala/Lift very attractive.

And then at lunch, my team member (and friend) were discussing his working on ASP-MVC 3 using C# on .NET 4.0. And it sounds like it would be very enjoyable to learn and use. And he spoke of enough things that seemed to overlap the Lift article I had read about in the morning.

My question is this: Given my limited time, what are the advantages and/or disadvantages of choosing Scala/Lift over C#/ASP-MVC 3? And what kind of advantages does C#/ASP-MVC 3 have over Scala/Lift?

To reduce complexity in my evaluation: Please assume the current latest version of each of these technologies; Scala 2.8.1 (2010/Dec), Lift 2.2 (2011/Jan), C#/.NET 4.0 (2010/Apr) and ASP-MVC 3 (2011/Jan).

Thank you for helping me at this critical architecture decision point.

UPDATE 2011/Mar/19 12:25 CDT:
I have since stumbled upon to a couple of resources that seem to be very helpful on the Scala/Lift side:
1. Free ebook (PDF and HTML) titled “Exploring Lift (Scala based web-framework)”
2. Wiki article by Lift’s creator titled “View First”

The first chapter of the ebook has been very helpful. I am really liking how focused the Lift design principles and implementation are on “separation of concerns” (keeping code out of the display snippets) and on “convention over configuration”.

And from what I have seen so far, while ASP-MVC 3 uses the same “strong guidelines”, it still depends upon a layer where code and presentation are “hybridized”. It’s where neither the site designers nor the software engineers dare tread AFTER origination. IOW, after origination, there be maintenance dragons. I would love for someone to tell me I am wrong here.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Scala / Lift pros:

    • can use enormous open source solutions / libraries for web and enterprise
    • more innovate
    • cost reduction
    • (subjective: prefer Scala syntax and data model)

    C# / ASP pros:

    • you are learning it at work, so you are more familiar in .NET technologies.
    • Spend less time for learning (since first point), and get support in job.

    For me Scala / Lift is more effective solution, but I’m more familiar with java/jvm and not tied with .NET

    • 0