What's the difference between using play start and play run?

Question

I am using play framework 2.0.4,

I noticed that in the project folder, if I used play start, the server responses faster than server started via

Answer 1

The play start command should be executed when you want to deploy your application on production mode. It's response faster, because the auto-reloading-class and other development-supporting-features are disabled by default.

Unlike play start command, the play run command is best executed on development mode because it will enable all development-supporting-feature like auto-reloading, eBean DDL generation, and so-on.

Actually, if you have a javascript file on public/javascripts/jquery-1.9.0.min.js. You still can access to url http://yourdomain/assets/javascripts/jquery-1.9.0.min.js even if you use play start or play run because the public/* files are mapped to /assets/*

And to be noticed that the play start command is doing the process in background, while play run not.