Conclusion

In this chapter we talked mainly about the Mentawai mission, philosophy and approach. We learned that the Mentawai mission is to be as simple as possible, joyful and productive. This is a very important statement that the Mentawai team keeps in mind on each and every modification of the framework, so allow us to emphasize this phrase.

Mentawai Mission wrote:
The Mentawai mission is to be a web framework as simple as possible, joyful and productive.

To accomplish that mission, the Mentawai framework has a very particular philosophy and approach. It uses Programmatic Configuration to make the art of programming more joyful and to escape from the XML/Annotation bloat. As we have seen, a programmatic configuration has many advantages over a configuration done through a markup language such as XML, among them integration with IDE, javadoc, dynamic scripting language configuration, flexibility, compile-time errors, etc.

Mentawai Approach wrote:
To use Programmatic Configuration and avoid any kind of XML and Annotations.

Another key point from the Mentawai philosophy is the use of high levels of abstraction to shield as much complexity as possible from the programmer and to escape from the Java framework salad. Mentawai believes that in order to do a web project in Java you should need as few frameworks as possible.

Mentawai Approach wrote:
To use high levels of abstraction to shield as much complexity as possible from the programmer.

Mentawai Approach wrote:
Avoid the Java framework salad by incorporating other frameworks (respecting their license of course) and implementing the main functionalities of other frameworks in the Mentawai core.

And last but not least, the use of Convention over Configuration (CoC) to provide defaults for all features.

Mentawai Approach wrote:
To use Convention Over Configuration to provide defaults for all features allowing the programmer to change them through programmatic configuration.

Enough of boring theory. Let's get some action now!