2008SEP061316
Cappuccino framework & Objective-J language
I had a peek at the Cappuccino source yesterday of an Objective-J app using Cappuccino. It's an impressive piece of engineering. There is a new framework with a new language based on GNUstep. It is Open Sourced. You can download it, play with it. Hack code. And probably the best thing about it is, you can use it to build applications now.
Not next week or year. Right now!
Desktop Developers, developers, developers ...
From a developer perspective you can see the allure of learning just having to learn a new language. Everything is abstracted, HTML, CSS, even the individual browser Document Object Model or DOM. To create an application you can implement some specification you are given. Using the predefined controls (just like the desktop model) with the aid of a layout diagram. Bingo, an instant application that works on the Web. This work flow is the way a lot of desktop GUI based applications have been developed in the past and the present. Think Windows & Mac even Gtk. So for desktop developers having to brave the unknown & to learn more about the vagaries of things like DOM variation in browsers, HTTP and users on the Web using technologies like Cappuccino is a nice neat solution to a lot of hairy problems. Project managers also love it because if it is just one language (Objective-J) they can break it down into bits, farm it out to the cheapest source of coders. Get things done in a known amount of time.
Against the grain of the Web?
Then I read this article, "Cappuccino’s FlickrDemo in 45 lines of jQuery" and see a demonstration remarkably like the 280 flickr demo and think, why? The promise of "one size fits all" development model is working against the grain of the Web. How is this against the Web? Well for starters the basics of developing a Cappuccino application is bound up in a combination of predefined Web based controls and code. While there is separation of presentation and logic only software developers have a say. As a group Software developers left to their own devices are horrible in designing GUI applications without the help of others. You also loose the layering of technologies. The ability to upgrade, change or remove one layer of technology as you see fit. The developers of course have done this on purpose. Traded flexibility for simplicity. They have reduced the complexity of designing desktop like applications and distilled it back to code and controls. Good for building applications on time, budget. Bad for users.
Comparisons
You can see a side by side comparison of JQuery demo remarkably like the 280 flickr demo. Having said all this, Cappuccino is designed specifically for desktop applications to be delivered to users across the web. But loosing the advantages of well designed Web-Apps for this style of development (mono language & gui) is not a compelling enough reason to abandon current development practices.
For me anyway.
next >>>
2008SEP061316
Cappuccino framework & Objective-J language
I had a peek at the Cappuccino source yesterday of an Objective-J app using Cappuccino. It's an impressive piece of engineering. There is a new framework with a new language based on GNUstep. It is Open Sourced. You can download it, play with it. Hack code. And probably the best thing about it is, you can use it to build applications now.
Not next week or year. Right now!
Desktop Developers, developers, developers ...
From a developer perspective you can see the allure of learning just having to learn a new language. Everything is abstracted, HTML, CSS, even the individual browser Document Object Model or DOM. To create an application you can implement some specification you are given. Using the predefined controls (just like the desktop model) with the aid of a layout diagram. Bingo, an instant application that works on the Web. This work flow is the way a lot of desktop GUI based applications have been developed in the past and the present. Think Windows & Mac even Gtk. So for desktop developers having to brave the unknown & to learn more about the vagaries of things like DOM variation in browsers, HTTP and users on the Web using technologies like Cappuccino is a nice neat solution to a lot of hairy problems. Project managers also love it because if it is just one language (Objective-J) they can break it down into bits, farm it out to the cheapest source of coders. Get things done in a known amount of time.
Against the grain of the Web?
Then I read this article, "Cappuccino’s FlickrDemo in 45 lines of jQuery" and see a demonstration remarkably like the 280 flickr demo and think, why? The promise of "one size fits all" development model is working against the grain of the Web. How is this against the Web? Well for starters the basics of developing a Cappuccino application is bound up in a combination of predefined Web based controls and code. While there is separation of presentation and logic only software developers have a say. As a group Software developers left to their own devices are horrible in designing GUI applications without the help of others. You also loose the layering of technologies. The ability to upgrade, change or remove one layer of technology as you see fit. The developers of course have done this on purpose. Traded flexibility for simplicity. They have reduced the complexity of designing desktop like applications and distilled it back to code and controls. Good for building applications on time, budget. Bad for users.
Comparisons
You can see a side by side comparison of JQuery demo remarkably like the 280 flickr demo. Having said all this, Cappuccino is designed specifically for desktop applications to be delivered to users across the web. But loosing the advantages of well designed Web-Apps for this style of development (mono language & gui) is not a compelling enough reason to abandon current development practices.
For me anyway.
next >>>