Chapter 1. Introduction to Play 2
This chapter covers
- Defining the Play framework
- Explaining high-productivity web frameworks
- Why Play supports both Java and Scala
- Why Scala needs the Play framework
- Creating a minimal Play application
Play isn’t a Java web framework. Java’s involved, but that isn’t the whole story. Although the first version of Play was written in the Java language, it ignored the conventions of the Java platform, providing a fresh alternative to excessive enterprise architectures. Play wasn’t based on Java Enterprise Edition APIs and it wasn’t made for Java developers. Play was made for web developers.
Play wasn’t just written for web developers; it was written by web developers, who brought high-productivity web development from modern frameworks like Ruby on Rails and Django to the JVM. Play is for productive web developers.
Play 2 is written in Scala, which means that not only do you get to write your web applications in Scala, but you also benefit from increased type safety throughout the development experience.
Play isn’t only about Scala and type safety. An important aspect of Play is its usability and attention to detail, which results in a better developer experience (DX). When you add this to higher developer productivity and more elegant APIs and architectures, you get a new emergent property: Play is fun.