title: Access model attributes without JSTL?
body: <p>I'm using Spring MVC and I've run into a lot of issues with cross dependencies of JSTL.  Is there an effective way of accessing a model attribute from within raw jsp?  For instance, how could I translate this loop WITHOUT using JSTL?</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;tbody&gt;
      &lt;c:forEach items="${things}" var="thing"&gt;
          &lt;tr&gt;
              &lt;td&gt;&lt;c:out value="${thing.name}"/&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
              &lt;td&gt;&lt;c:out value="${thing.description}"/&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
          &lt;/tr&gt;
      &lt;/c:forEach&gt;
  &lt;/tbody&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I've tried a few variants on </p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;tbody&gt;
      &lt;% for (int i = 0; i &lt; ${things}.length; i++ %&gt;
          &lt;tr&gt;
              &lt;td&gt;&lt;${things[i].name}/&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
              &lt;td&gt;&lt;${things[i].description}/&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
          &lt;/tr&gt;
      &lt;/c:forEach&gt;
  &lt;/tbody&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But I can't get the syntax correct and almost every example on the web uses JSTL.</p>
  
  <p>P.S.
  I expect to be blasted for ditching JSTL, but seriously this error is ridiculous:</p>
  
  <pre><code>java.lang.AbstractMethodError: javax.servlet.jsp.PageContext.getELContext()Ljavax/el/ELContext;
  </code></pre>