On Jul 11, 5:54 am, Stephan Beal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> A public jQuery forum is probably not the place to address non-
> Believers - that is, people who do not use jQuery - but my hope is
> that some of the Believers here will take this and pass it on to any
> non-Believers who they know, to help convert the Poor Sods who are
> wasting their time writing code to traverse and manipulate their
> [X]HTML DOMs.
Based on my 30+ years of software and product development, with nearly
20+ or so language coverage in my time, I come to understand that
people will use the tools they are comfortable with - its that
simple. I mean, there was time during my old arrogrant and snobbish
days where I thought APL was the greatest language in the world and
you had to be a moron if you were not able to use it. As the old
saying went, "if an APL programmer can't program the world in one
line, he won't program at all." APL required a different mindset.
For me, personally, it was very important to have complete control of
my resources and a 100% grasp of the nuts and bolts. Wrappers and
layers, and yet even more layers and wrappers for the previous layers
and wrappers usually proved to be a waste of time, especially when
things "broke" or it wasn't exactly how you expected, or you needed
more functionality. But overall, if you don't have control of your
resources, you can surely waste alot of time just as well.
Consider that the language BASIC is still around for a reason. I
recall the days when the next best lanuguage or popular for the time,
was suppose to kill BASIC. However, what usually happen over and over
again is that as the machines got faster and fast, the interpretative
languages such as BASIC became more "useable," even more popular.
I would venture that JAVASCRIPT falls in this category - the speed of
the today hardware have many languages like JavasScript, and the
affordablity to add layer after layers on that of JS, practical and
feasible.
Just as yourself does it pay to compile it? We have one of the
original Online Hosting systems in the market - BBS systems, some
might call them today "Online communitys and social networks." Ours
system was one of the first integrated application servers with a
pcode-server side language called wcBASIC. BASIC was selected back
in the 80s for marketing reasons - EVERYONE knew it.
But today, there isn't a day that doesn't go by where don't consider
using a interpretatve, not compiled server-side language. Using
Javsascript on the server-side may be practical. Not sure. We would
like to explore that.
We had one of the PHP authors working for us, and sometimes I think it
was mistake not giving him the freedom to use his PHP work for our
system instead of WCBASIC. I can say that in hindsight, but back
then Open Source was still something that bothered us - everything we
did was interrnal, no dependencies, plus, how can you compare pcode
compile server side applets to a slower PHP interpreative environment
which in reality did yield slower page rendering. Plus, and you might
related to this with your SpiderApe work, wcBASIC was a multidevice
system and included template technology that allowed console
development as well - an important part of a BBS system.
> To help put this in context a bit, i want to lay my credentials out on
> the table, so that nobody will think that this letter is coming from a
> noob script-kiddie. My first line of code (in BASIC, no less) was
> pounded out on Christmas day of 1983. Since that day my life has more
> or less been centered around computing. Since 1994 i have worked
> professionally with computers, and since over 10 years i've earned my
> daily bread by programming in a variety of languages, such as Java, C+
> + and PHP. i run a couple of Open Source projects, such
> ashttp://toc.sf.net,http://SpiderApe.sf.net, and, my personal
> favourite,http://s11n.net.
> i also write technical papers from time to time (http://
> wanderinghorse.net/computing/papers/).
Very impressive work you are doing with SpiderApe. :-)
> When i first caught wind of jQuery, the name made it sound like an SQL
> library for Java.
Now that you mention it, I too do seem to recall thinking "SQL" when I
saw a reference to JQuery somewhere.
> On the home page of jquery.com we are immediately faced with the
> second arch-enemy of programmers everywhere: a Statement of Hype. It
> speaks thusly:
>
> "You start with 10 lines of jQuery that would have been 20 lines of
> tedious DOM JavaScript. By the time you are done it's down to two or
> three lines and it couldn't get any shorter unless it read your mind."
> - Dave Methvin
The Layer over layer syndrom. :-) Honestly, it all depends, layers
are suppose to simplify things, making it easier for programmers to
cover ideas with less coding. You still need a basic understanding of
what it your are wrapping, and also understand when things do not
react as you expecting. However, once it becomes its own complex
monster, it defeats the purpose. JQuery needs to pay attention to
natural tendency to add more "stuff."
> Barf! Hype!
>
> (The first arch-enemy of programmers is of course the Marketing
> Department, who are themselves normally responsible for generating
> Hype. But, in fact, we have a symbiotic relationship with Marketing,
> so we should not bemoan them too much.)
There is an old great poster with the rethorical question:
What comes first? Marketing or Technology?
> While it takes a little while to set up a few useful examples, the
> more we use jQuery, the more useful it seems to be. We continually
> return to the web site to browse the tutorials and API documentation.
> After a day or two we are fairly comfortable with it, and All is Good.
What I think needs to be pointed out, is not what JQUERY offers, but
the language and syntax it offers. That is whats difference here, in
my opinion.
I'm speaking for myself, but its powerful syntax is both a blessing
and a curse. It gives you the technology to work more productively
with DOM/CSS, but it doesn't help with marketing because you still
need a pretty good undersstanding of DOM and programming. So its not
for everyone.
In addition, I believe strongly in pareto's principle in my
development. You are not going to get everyone usiing 100% of its
feature set. In geneal, most people will begin using only 20% of it
80% of the time. Just look at JTIP - it is distributed with a RISC
(Reduced Instruction Set Computer) version of JQUERY.JS. Cody Lindley
used Pareto's Principle! :-)
> Then we decide we need More. Now that jQuery has freed us from the
> Tedium of the DOM, we want our web pages to do More. We want to add
> animation effects, tabbed controls, and whatnot. Those are a lot of
> work to implement, and we have not, so far, done so because it is so
> tedious to do so.
And for others, like myself, we have the vision that the more you
think like this, someone is going to say "Why not just download a
specialized frontend and qui?" Its the old Fat vs thin paradign. You
want to do more with the Browser that in general is already done with
specific client side coding.
With have 5-6 different ways or clients that users can use to access
our application server, a traditional GUI frontend, a Browser HTML
interface, a JAVA Interface, Dialup ANSI/VT100, Telnet, and with our
RPC API/SDK. We are constantly challenged one what to give rid of,
but the bottom line they are all still used. We might throw out for
debate the idea of getting rid of the GUI frontend and go with the WEB
2.0 stuff, including FLEX and/or JAVA. But we are constantly reminded
that people still want their special GUI applicaiton and don't want to
use a BROWSER. We are still doing the WEB 2.0, we have too, that
might explain my presence here, but I as continue to move in this
direction, adding "dynamic Interactive I/O" with the browser, I can't
help but think at some people, this basically becomes a special GUI
download.
And I don't think I am far off, just look at Adobe's Apollo and Flex -
they think this is the future. Microsoft thinks the same thing -
having special downloads to provide full broardband richness.
Keep in mind I don't disagree with you. I think you will have both.
The question I ask is how much should JQUERY do? is there a certain
threshold where it might be more feasible to burn it into a single GUI
download? I am not sure if I want it to do everything for me that you
become so dependent on it that it alters your design framework for
everything else.
> Yes, brothers and sisters, it is possible. It is proven and
> demonstrated dozens of times over on jquery.com. But it is only
> possible because the jQuery developers have brought us such a Damned
> Slick framework. The word "framework" sounds suspiciously like
> Something from the Marketing Department, but don't let that deter you
> - simply interpret it as "a collection of pre-defined functionality
> off of which to build more functionality." (But framework" is a lot
> easier to say.)
It depends on who you are targeting and what other framework it is
competing with. :-) You are right, in the one hand, it can scare
people off.
Personally, and I may be wrong, and I just a few days into it, to help
push it more, I think it should focus "selling" one what it does best
- not take away from learning DOM/CSS, but show how how can use JQUERY
to work with DOM/CSS. In short, I think, lots and lots of side by side
example. The idea, show the DOM/CSS way and the JQUERY way. Also for
me, the language syntax is completely new to me. Again, just a few
days into it, it may want to devote some doc pages to this syntax.
I am completely amaze that its every possible! I had to study the
JQUERY.JS (actually JTIP.JS) code to learn how these "function()" as
parameters work - very complex stuff IMO for most people.
> We now have a choice to make: 1) weep for those Poor Bastards who do
> not Believe, or 2) help the Poor Bastards who do not Believe. If you
> choose (1), then stop here and weep (or laugh) all you like. If you
> choose (2), pass around the jQuery URL (hint:http://jquery.com) to
> any Poor Bastards you know, point them to the numerious tutorials and
> the API documentation, and then watch gleefully as they sob away their
> pent-up frustrations and shout like madmen, "aaaarrrrgggghhhh! If I
> had only known this two weeks ago, before our project deadline had
> passed!"
>
> Amen, brothers and sisters.
So are we back to the old APL saying:
If the JQUERY programmer can not program the WORLD in one line of
code, he
won't prrogram at all? :
Maybe the poor bastards are using something else that is more code
documentation friendly? and are saying the JQUERY people, like the old
APL programmer, are sadistic? <g>
See ya
--
HLS
