* Sparks intention is to provide a pure Java alternative for developers that want to (or are required to), develop their web application in Java. Spark is built around Java 8's lambda philosophy, which makes a typical Spark application a lot less verbose than most application written in other Java web frameworks. * Spark focuses on being as simple and straight-forward as possible, without the need for cumbersome (XML) configuration, to enable very fast web application development in pure Java with minimal effort. It’s a totally different paradigm when compared to the overuse of annotations for accomplishing pretty trivial stuff seen in other web frameworks. * Spark is a simple, lightweight and not opinionated pure Java web framework that doesn't get in your way, unlike in other Java web frameworks, you can structure your application as you want.

* Stripes is simple in that it doesn't force developers to grok everything about it in order to get started. By not having to know all the details, or even that many of them exist, it's easy for a developer to get the basics and get started. A perfect example of this is the interceptor framework, and the before/after methods. A developer can be blissfully ignorant of these with no negative consequences. But when a need for such a function arises, they are easy to discover. * Stripes, at its core, is an action framework and action frameworks as a whole don't shy away from the fact that the entire web is implemented on top of a stateless protocol (HTTP). It supports backward compatibility.