Hey Web Developer – Need a Lift (1.0)?


Promising New Web Framework Now Available for Download; Developers Applaud Framework’s ‘Conciseness of Ruby with the Compile Times Performance of Java’


San Francisco– February 26, 2009 – On the eve of the Project’s second anniversary, the creators and early adopters of the Scala-based open source web framework toasted beers and heavily caffeinated beverages across the globe as they made version 1.0 available for download (web link here)at http://liftweb.net.


“Each new major era of software development began with a problem that traditional languages and design patterns could not solve,” said David Pollak, creator of Lift. “If the current technical challenges of Facebook, Twitter and massive multi-player online games are harbingers, it’s pretty clear that it’s time again for a new programming language and a new development framework to foster efficient delivery of a whole new generation of applications and web services. Today, we’re here to say that Scala and Lift are the new guard, built specifically for the future challenges of web development.”


While Lift has been too nascent for the mainstream thus far, it has quietly become indispensable for the developers of the next generation of consumer web and enterprise development projects that involve highly interactive web sites. To date, more than a dozen developers are working on the open-source project across Asia, Europe and the United States and there are approximately 20 applications of Lift in commercial production including Buy a Feature (http://buyafeature.com).


“Lift's excellent 'Comet –made- easy' philosophy made it an absolute no-brainer as the choice of framework for the Apache ESME project,” said Darren Hauge, SAP Mentor and ESME Team Lead. “Additionally, the fact that Lift-based applications run unchanged on the SAP's NetWeaver CE Java application server makes an intriguing approach for enterprise applications in the SAP world.”


Mr. Hauge, as well as many other developers, have realized the following benefits:


  • Lift is a faster way to build multi-person, highly interactive web sites, fully deployable on J2EE stack

  • Superior development and runtime performance and scalability

  • Lift applications are more secure than those built with other popular frameworks

  • Lift works with existing Java libraries and tools

  • Real time multiperson interactive web sites run better on Lift than anything else

  • Scala (ruby+Java greatness in one), plus smart folks in the open source project

  • Crazy J2EE-class scalability, don't without having to give up runtime for development performance

Developers can prototype applicationss in a matter of days in a small community (much like Rails)


“The interest and excitement about Scala continues to grow.  It’s great to see Lift reaching the 1.0 milestone as this is a proof point for the maturity of Scala as a software platform,” said Martin Odersky, ACM Fellow, and father of Scala.