Definitely. I'm perfectly happy with Spring. A developer can create the most lightweight web application with the most manageable code with Spring.

Have you tried Play (playframework.org) yet?

Yes I've tried it (pre Play 2), and there's one thing I don't like - favoring/integrating certain tools in it. I know that it uses Hibernate through the JPA API, and if you want to use a different ORM you'll have to make a lot of workarounds. And it's not only about ORM. A month or so ago I read that it will integrate a certain JavaScript library in it too. Tapestry Web Framework had this attitude, but the developers found that it brought more negative than positive effect, I hope Play will see the same. Modularity and ease of configuration is a very important thing.

I like it's Scala support and enthusiasm though, and I will definitely try it some day again.

I have high hopes that Play will become the defacto "pragmatic" java/scala(/kotlin, when it's finally ready) framework. Play rocks.

I would dearly like to use Play, but I find it really uncomfortable (and not because I'm some stuck-in-my-ways Java developer). Play's heavy abuse of statics is a real problem from my perspective, in large part because it's extremely painful to write inheritance-based code; I realize it helps the simpler use case but I find that I don't regularly write to the simpler use case.

I've gone back to Servlets+Guice+Velocity because it's easier for me to write expressive code.

+1 Can't see any sane reason why either would be used for a new project in 2012.

Absolutely agree. I work with a very large "enterprise" (investment bank) and they deploy every one to two weeks. We wouldn't touch Spring or JEE with a barge pole. I don't know what world the author lives in.

@mgkimsal - yes java, moving towards scala on newer projects. We use simple, fast & testable solutions, such as a main class or servlet listener which constructs an application programmatically, rather than a monolithic spring or JEE configuration.

Could you tell us which framework you're using then? I know that most Java enterprise software is either on Spring or on EJB, I'd love to know if there's an alternative.

are you using java at all, or something else entirely?

Scala or Java SE the way to go IMHO.

Scala is a language, not a framework. You can use Spring with Scala too [1]. Personally, I wouldn't use it for an enterprise project just yet, because of its compatibility issues. And why on earth Java SE? The enterprise edition gives you everything a standard edition does, plus libraries for messaging, transactions, persistence, basically everything you need to write a large scale enterprise app.

[1] http://www.infoq.com/articles/scala_and_spring

While Scala is not a framework, it can be used with many Java libs. It isn't necessary to use xml-heavy frameworks and app servers to write "enterprise" apps. Endless layers of OR-mapping and xml is not productive. There are endless messaging and persistence solutions available without resorting to xml-obsessed JEE and Spring.