Question for Flex in action 4 Authors regarding flex frameworks

[Anup Francis]

From your personal experiences, which framework do you guys prefer to use most while creating Flex based applications?
RobotLegs, Mate, Swiz or Parsley.
I have worked with Mate previously and have found it be quite good.
I have also read through the documentation on RobotLegs and Parsley.
I like them both but I believe Parsley could be a more well rounded library with more features especially the Spicelib As3 library.
RobotLegs is a pretty small framework but easy to use and also has AS3 signals support.
I have never had a chance so far, to try out these 2 frameworks in a real world app.
So, would like to know what are your preferences regarding frameworks?

[Dan Orlando]

If you take a look at chapter 19 on Architectural frameworks, you'll find that one of my first points is - "If you focus on the business, the tool will present itself." In other words, each framework has its own respective strengths and weaknesses, so which one you use is entirely dependent on the situation that you are building for.

[Joel Hooks]

Anup Francis wrote:From your personal experiences, which framework do you guys prefer to use most while creating Flex based applications?
RobotLegs, Mate, Swiz or Parsley.
I have worked with Mate previously and have found it be quite good.
I have also read through the documentation on RobotLegs and Parsley.
I like them both but I believe Parsley could be a more well rounded library with more features especially the Spicelib As3 library.
RobotLegs is a pretty small framework but easy to use and also has AS3 signals support.
I have never had a chance so far, to try out these 2 frameworks in a real world app.
So, would like to know what are your preferences regarding frameworks?

I use and contribute to Robotlegs (and chapter 19 of Flex 4 in Action has a large section on it). I also use Parsley and really like it.

Parsley is everything and the kitchen sink. It is heavy in a lot of ways and more complex because of the expansive features that it provides. This is good and bad as it adds to the complexity. The framework is ~20k lines of code itself. I really enjoy it and use it with the "Cairngorm 3" prescription for architecture applied with great success.

Robotlegs is a tiny single responsibility framework. It doesn't contain bells and whistles and provides a clear prescription for development. The framework (including SwiftSuspenders) is right around 2k lines of code. Why do I mention the lines of code? Because if you want to truly understand the framework you are using you should understand how it works. Robotlegs is much easier to wrap your brain around in that regard.

I honestly don't know which I would recommend over the other. Both are excellent and built by smart guys (Jens Halm and Shaun Smith). Robotlegs has more community which might mean better support via http://knowledge.robotlegs.org. I also like the way the RL community has taken to building utilities and libraries for RL. In this way, RL gets a lot of the functionality that Parsley has, but as modular building blocs instead of a monolithic framework. it is impossible to say which is appropriate for you. I say learn them both and build cool things with both. You can't go wrong!