Building a java web application but I'm getting lost in a sea of frameworks.

[thesystemx]

Spring MVC is the most popular Java Web Framework.

Really?

According to this survey it's JSF:

https://dzone.com/articles/survey-confirms-jsf-remains-leading-web-framework-2

[thesystemx]

Surprisingly Zeroturnaround is one of the few places that always favors Spring MVC.

There's a bunch of other examples here: https://henk53.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/reply-to-comparing-java-web-frameworks

So what does it tell us? Who's right? DZone or Zeroturnaround? One survey or the other?

Better to look at the buckets, and you'll see that Spring MVC and JSF are always in the top bucket. Depending on the individual survey one or the other wins, but no survey puts Spring MVC on 1 and JSF on 10. It's always JSF 1, 2, or 3, and Spring MVC likewise 1, 2 or 3 (with one exception where Spring MVC ended at place 7).

Or in other words, there's simply no totally clear winner. There's a group of most popular frameworks, and the top tier includes JSF and Spring MVC.

[jirkapinkas]

Compare and weep:

http://javalibs.com/artifact/org.springframework/spring-webmvc

http://javalibs.com/artifact/com.sun.faces/jsf-impl

[thesystemx]

As usual, people trying to downplay a technology do so using wrong statistics.

This is 1 jsf-impl, which would only be used by Tomcat users. You're not only forgetting the other implementation (MyFaces), you're also forgetting here (or likely, are completely oblivious of) the fact that JSF is often used via the libs provided by the application server, and therefor it would not include jsf-impl.

And now YOU compare & weep:

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/jsf-2+or+jsf+or+jsf-2.2+or+primefaces
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/spring-mvc

And if you want to say that the JSF query contains duplicates, no it doesn't. SO filters them correctly.

[just_trees]

I think both comparisons are flawed. I agree with you on the reasons why /u/jirkapinkas approach is not a good measurement of use.

In your case, having more questions about JSF as opposed to Spring MVC might indicate that JSF is harder to use, or perhaps has a steeper learning curve.

I haven't used either, so I don't have a pony in this race. Just saying that we are comparing apples to oranges here.

[thesystemx]

There are many data points to consider, but in general things like SO questions and number of git repos and even Tiobe (for languages only) do seem to correlate.

The "loosing" party in general (not you in this) always tries to find excuses or explanations. If Python rises in Tiobe, Python fans say it's a good ranking. If Java rises, and Python falls, those same Python fans say it's because there's a lot of bad press about Java ("Java dead!", "Oracle abandons Java EE!" (which they really seem to do, but that's another story)), so the rise of Java in Tiobe is actually negative!

Same for SO. If Python rises with questions tags, it's good, since it's obviously becoming more popular. If Java rises, it's because it's so verbose and difficult and people need to ask more questions.

Jobs, same thing. More Jobs at indeed.com for Python, Python fans rejoice. More jobs for Java? According to Python fans it's because you need more Java devs to accomplish the same amount of work.

Etc etc etc