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MEAN

343
612
+ 1
594
Play

754
601
+ 1
496
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MEAN vs Play: What are the differences?

MEAN: A Simple, Scalable and Easy starting point for full stack javascript web development. MEAN (Mongo, Express, Angular, Node) is a boilerplate that provides a nice starting point for MongoDB, Node.js, Express, and AngularJS based applications. It is designed to give you a quick and organized way to start developing MEAN based web apps with useful modules like Mongoose and Passport pre-bundled and configured; Play: The High Velocity Web Framework For Java and Scala. Play Framework makes it easy to build web applications with Java & Scala. Play is based on a lightweight, stateless, web-friendly architecture. Built on Akka, Play provides predictable and minimal resource consumption (CPU, memory, threads) for highly-scalable applications.

MEAN and Play can be primarily classified as "Frameworks (Full Stack)" tools.

"Javascript", "Easy" and "Nosql" are the key factors why developers consider MEAN; whereas "Scala", "Web-friendly architecture" and "Built on akka" are the primary reasons why Play is favored.

MEAN and Play are both open source tools. MEAN with 11.8K GitHub stars and 3.57K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Play with 11.2K GitHub stars and 3.77K GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Play has a broader approval, being mentioned in 112 company stacks & 47 developers stacks; compared to MEAN, which is listed in 37 company stacks and 24 developer stacks.

Advice on MEAN and Play
Leonardo Viada
Project manager and web developer at Revo Digital · | 4 upvotes · 2.7M views
Needs advice
on
PlayPlayRailsRails
and
ScalaScala
at

In the past few months, a project we're working on grew up quite fast. Since we're adding more and more features, I'm considering migrating my Express/TS REST API towards a more solid and more "enterprise-like" framework. Since I am experienced with TypeScript but not so much with Rails nor Play (Scala), I'd like to have some advice on which one could provide the best development experience, and most importantly, the smoothest paradigm transition from the JS/TS world. I've worked on some personal project with Rails, but I've found the Ruby language really distant from what the TypeScript ecosystem and syntax are, whereas on the opposite - during the brief tours I've taken in the past weeks - it's been a pleasure coding in Scala. Obviously, there are some key differences between the two languages - and the two frameworks consequently - but despite all the ROR automation and ease of use I don't despise at all Scala's pragmatic and great features such as static typing, pattern matching, and type inference. So... Please help me out with the choice! Regards

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Replies (4)
Kevin Emery
QE Systems Engineer at Discovery, Inc. · | 6 upvotes · 54.1K views
Recommends
on
RailsRails

I don't have the Scala experience to compare the two, but I can say that Ruby is a wonderful language. For procedural programming where you don't need a lot of concurrent execution threads, it's superior to Node.JS in my opinion. All of the concepts from Typescript have equivalent syntax in Ruby, but there are fewer symbols (e.g. () => { ... }); ) and more keywords (eg 'do ... end'). It's a very flexible language and allows for a lot of different approaches to how it's written, so coding standards and careful organization is important. In the long run, however, you'll find it quicker to debug than Node.JS and just as powerful.

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ALESSIO SALTARIN
Distinguished IT Architect at IBM · | 5 upvotes · 54.9K views

If you are comfortable with TypeScript, why not evolve to a C# ecosystem? Asp.Net Core + Entity Framework is a mature and well supported technology. As far as I can see in the enterprise market, the most adopted choice is still Java. So, maybe you may have a look to SpringBoot - and ultimately Quarkus.

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Reza Malek
at Meam Software Engineering Group · | 3 upvotes · 46.3K views
Recommends
on
RailsRailsScalaScala

This is advice regardless of your background and requirements. The Play framework has a terrible and complicated design, don't risk it. I even suggest Spring and Kotlin over it! You can use Scala for small services and Data Engineering stuff and benefit optimizations and threading of JVM. RoR, on the other hand, has a huge development speed, which I believe is a big advantage cause you can handle performance bottlenecks later. Also, Scala has another downside, which is featureful in terms of OO and FP paradigms, which makes anyone write code freely with any personal style and makes it a problem in a team, Hence a coding style has to be defined if there would be Scala development team.

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Hosam Aly
Senior Software Engineer · | 3 upvotes · 46.3K views
Recommends
on
PlayPlayRailsRailsScalaScala

If software performance is your top priority, then Scala/Play is probably best. If developer productivity is your top priority, then Ruby on Rails is the best choice in my opinion.

The Rails framework is batteries-included. The framework takes care of many things by default so that you don't have to. Logging, security, etc. It's also well-integrated; for example, controllers understand models out of the box. I had a better experience with RoR than with Play.

On the other hand, Scala and the JVM are more performant in general, so they can scale to serve more requests per second on the same hardware.

If you're considering serverless functions, then Scala is probably a better choice because it would be faster to load, giving you better economics.

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Pros of MEAN
Pros of Play
  • 86
    Javascript
  • 62
    Easy
  • 58
    Nosql
  • 52
    Great community
  • 50
    Mongoose
  • 50
    Modularity
  • 48
    Open source
  • 37
    Organized
  • 32
    Simple
  • 31
    Boilerplate
  • 10
    AngularJs
  • 9
    CLI
  • 9
    It's simply awesome
  • 8
    Cutting edge tech
  • 7
    Passport
  • 6
    It's a great new exciting stack
  • 6
    Yeoman
  • 6
    Docs
  • 5
    Friendly & Fun
  • 4
    Great Flexibility ;)
  • 4
    The WordPress of javascript apps
  • 3
    Genius
  • 2
    Modular
  • 2
    Scalable
  • 2
    JavaScript only
  • 1
    Growing Community
  • 1
    It's fun and has great potential
  • 1
    Gulp
  • 1
    Because i can write everything using javascript
  • 1
    Fast
  • 0
    The best
  • 81
    Scala
  • 55
    Web-friendly architecture
  • 55
    Built on akka
  • 50
    Stateless
  • 47
    High-scalable
  • 46
    Fast
  • 40
    Open source
  • 34
    Java
  • 27
    High velocity
  • 24
    Fun
  • 9
    Lightweight
  • 8
    Non-blocking io
  • 6
    Developer friendly
  • 5
    Simple template engine
  • 4
    Scalability
  • 3
    Pure love
  • 2
    Resource efficient

Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

Cons of MEAN
Cons of Play
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 3
      Evolves fast, keep up with releases
    • 1
      Unnecessarily complicated

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    What is MEAN?

    MEAN (Mongo, Express, Angular, Node) is a boilerplate that provides a nice starting point for MongoDB, Node.js, Express, and AngularJS based applications. It is designed to give you a quick and organized way to start developing MEAN based web apps with useful modules like Mongoose and Passport pre-bundled and configured.

    What is Play?

    Play Framework makes it easy to build web applications with Java & Scala. Play is based on a lightweight, stateless, web-friendly architecture. Built on Akka, Play provides predictable and minimal resource consumption (CPU, memory, threads) for highly-scalable applications.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use MEAN?
    What companies use Play?
    See which teams inside your own company are using MEAN or Play.
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    Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

    What tools integrate with MEAN?
    What tools integrate with Play?

    Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

    What are some alternatives to MEAN and Play?
    Mode
    Created by analysts, for analysts, Mode is a SQL-based analytics tool that connects directly to your database. Mode is designed to alleviate the bottlenecks in today's analytical workflow and drive collaboration around data projects.
    Node.js
    Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.
    Django
    Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.
    ASP.NET
    .NET is a developer platform made up of tools, programming languages, and libraries for building many different types of applications.
    Laravel
    It is a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax. It attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching.
    See all alternatives