Re-inventing the wheel!

Recently been to the Velocity page. Velocity is a Java-based templates engine designed to work hand-in-hand with Apache Struts and servlets said to make it easier to customize Web sites. Like Velocity, there are scores of projects at jakarta.org many of which claim to be offshoots or improvements on existing ones. Nothing bad about that!

But I wonder if it's always worthwhile to start a new project just to improve upon an existing one. Why not reform the existing one itself? Velocity for one..claims to be provide a "viable" alterative for JSP itself. Noel J. Bergman very strongly and justfiably echoes my opinion:

The Velocity documentation states that "the Velocity Template Language (VTL) is meant to provide the easiest, simplest, and cleanest way to incorporate dynamic content in a Web page. Even a Web page developer with little or no programming experience should soon be capable of using VTL to incorporate dynamic content in a Web site." In other words, Velocity doesn't remove programming from presentation; rather it requires users to learn a new ad hoc scripting language. By requiring Web page designers to learn the Velocity Template Language, Velocity fails to eliminate the mingling of the content and presentation. Velocity is just one example among a number of template engines on the market, but most of them, like Velocity, require some degree of programming skill on the front end.