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After a recent jarring transition from the ASP.NET universe to Java EE Web, I am assured that the vast majority of the professional Java development community is severely misguided.

If you ever find yourself willingly contributing with scriptlets, I'm sorry, but you are fired.

JSTL is superior in separation of concern. JSTL is more versatile. And JSTL is even more readable by the basic human. These all contribute to a degree maintainability. A JSTL implementation has substantial payout of reduced maintenance time, including that of the preventative flavor. It is a supremely effective defensive engineering mechanism.

If you are not making a conscious, concerted effort to prevent a scriptlet anti-pattern, there are many who particularly do not like you. If you do not believe you have a compulsory obligation to a product, the practice, or even the company, you at least have an obligation to yourself. Every day is an opportunity to do better than you did yesterday. And you are much better than scriptlets.