Is liftweb still alive?

Question

Scala

I recently came across a project on liftweb, I had to spend some time studying it. I more or less managed to figure it out, but in the process I noted that all the articles and books available on the network date from 2010-13. Apparently, there was then some surge of interest in the framework.
So I want to understand, today it makes sense to study it thoroughly, does it have any perspective? Or did he appear, stay "in vogue" and forget? Is someone writing on it in 2016?

Answer 1

As for the meaning of studying - if after you figured out the project on lift you still have an interest in this framework and you see that it will allow you to successfully solve your problems, then in my opinion, of course, it is worth continuing to work with it and study it. Fashion is a relative concept, but the mailing list seems to be active and there is activity on github , given that lift is one of the oldest frameworks for Scala.
In terms of popularity, the most popular web frameworks/libraries for building web applications in my opinion are the Play Framework , / akka-http ( spray ) and Finatra / Finch. While Play and Finatra are full-fledged web-frameworks, and akka-http and finch are more minimalistic, so they are more like libraries.
Well, a lot of their popularity, in my opinion, stems from the companies behind these tools - Lightbend (formerly Typesafe), founded by Martin Odersky (creator of Scala) and Jonas Bonér (creator of akka), which develops and promotes Play and Akka, as well as Twitter, where Finagle/Finatra was born. Considering that for Lightbend the main income is consultations, including on Play and Akka, it is clear that they are interested in the greatest popularity of these products and have the opportunity to promote them (by the way, I think that the popularity is well deserved).
Interestingly, when Typesafe was being created, David Pollak (the creator of Lift) turned down an offer to include lift as a web framework for the stack of products that Typesafe was going to promote (at that time this stack ended up being Play, Akka, SBT), perhaps that this decision comes back to haunt the fact that now lift is not particularly in trend .... Other things being equal, I would choose one of the three voiced above, but in general you need to study what you will be comfortable and pleasant to use, but here you already need to know your goals, objectives and preferences. Look at other options, read reviews and it may become more obvious to you what to use and learn. For an example, look at the framework and what is presented on scaladex:
https://index.scala-lang.org/search?q=keywords:web...
PS You can read about Typesafe, Lift, Play and David Pollak in this question on Quora (with the participation of David Pollak and Jonas Bonner): Why did Typesafe select Play for their stack inste...

Answer 2

I found 32,088 mentions of the package liftwebon GitHub. Of course, there are fewer projects themselves) But I have never seen a success story with liftweb in the lead role(