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We're using Apache Wicket and are pretty happy with it.

Has Wicket changed to not require so much code? I wrote a handful of apps using Wicket 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 before realizing I was writing thousands of lines of code to update UI models and backend models that shouldn't be taxing me so much.

Used Play for a few projects, but don't like that 2.0 is more or less getting rewritten... don't like Spring... not sure what is left (JEE6 and JSF2? God I don't want to use JSF again unless it changed significantly)

IFF latency isn't an issue, just chop the front-end and expose services from the Java container (where it shines and makes perfect sense) and use a suitable non-Java front-end tech to create the presentation layer.

Re Wicket: have a look at PropertyModel and CompoundPropertyModel. You'll lose a bit of type safety, but it will seriously cut down on boilerplate code. In particular it helps map wicket:ids to your Java bean hierarchies by following simple conventions.

Somehow I managed to use Wicket for well over a year before realizing the benefit to this approach.

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