Wicket vs Vaadin

Question

I am torn between Wicket and Vaadin. I am starting a micro-isv and need to make a choice of web framework. I have narrowed down my choices to Wicket and Vaadin. I have used both

Answer 1

I am currently working with Wicket and I have worked in the pass with Vaadin. I wil be short in my observations:

• Vaadin is entitled to be free but IMO, is not so beautiful like that. If you need support, help, documentation for that painful and tricky problems that you encounter, then you are screwed because you do not have so good documentation/community when compared with Apache Wicket. Vaadin have guys to help you, but you have to pay for it.;
• To program in wicket you need to be a strong programmer. Vaadin also requires good Java knowledge but you can easily do some spaghetti code if you want (just saying, not doing..);
• Apache Wicket really separate the web technologies (Javascript, HTML, etc.) from the framework technology (Java). Vaadin also try to do it, but IMO is not so elegant and transparent on that.

Appart from that, we are talking about two different types of frameworks, two different approach, which have pros and cons that I advice you to search and compare and see what really fits your needs.

Edit: Oh, and about the look and feel, for instance you always have Wicket Bootstrap