Discussion on:

Why qooxdoo falls short on its goal of simplification

Tony -

I am not sure if I follow the technical details of this. Why would you need make for a JavaScript library? Or is that for a server side piece? If it is for a server side peice, what are the requirements for installing it?

Thanks!

J.Ja

Essentially, qooxdoo implements an advanced class system on top of JavaScript?s built-in OO facilities. This is mainly used for the internal workings of qooxdoo itself, and instantiating and using qooxdoo objects is straightforward in JavaScript code.

So the JScript itself does not necessitate a build environment; you need it to compile the external qooxdoo libraries...at least I think this is the reason.

I'm guessing this is why Tony found it less than spectacular when he delved into the details, though I don't see this as a big deal to most Java devs, it would be a bit of a barrier to someone like me.

The build process is described as a special feature of Qooxdoo that "does a lot of optimizing and packaging while creating a self-contained build version of your application." This requires setting up a Unix-like environment on Windows (via cygwin) to utilize the process, or you are okay if using Unix. I agree that a Java developer wouldn't have a problem with the process, but most Web developers are not Java developers. Using a JavaScript library should be as easy as including it within the page, but that is only my opinion.

emulation platform on windows.

Windows command line tools are like the little brother trying to play in the big game. You smile and say that is cute but the Unix/Linux command line tools are soooo much better.

Cygwin gives you real "make", awk/sed/grep and bash environment that windows eschews for a cottoncandy GUI.

I use both Cygwin and WSU, and I actually prefer the Microsoft product (they farmed out the development to Interix anyway). One issue has been I could never get the termcap set quite right and my bash shell on cygwin was problematic.

I haven't looked at this JS lib, but if they are assuming Unix skills, they should put that up front. My experience has been that some (most?) Windows developers, especially the VB-types, have a difficult time adapting to command-line utilities, such as make.

I would recommend a step-by-step tutorial to setting up a cygwin environment, installing the correct packages, etc. I just happen to know a kick-ass programmer/writer who could bang this out in just a week or so, 8-).

doug

You know, I've never touched WSU, but it seems like 99% of people forget that it's there. Indeed, I forget that it is there 99% of the time. It is stuff like that, or the fact that IE used to be availble on *Nix, or the fact that the NT/2000 codebase used to run on PPC, SPARC, MIPS, and Alpha CPUs (indeed, the original XBox OS was a modification of the Windows 2000 PPC codebase, mostly just removing the unneeded stuff and upgrading Direct X), that leads me to beleive that Microsoft is not nearly as closed as a lot of people claim that they are. I am just always picking up too many undercurrents of them doing things at odds with what most people think of when they hear "Microsoft". Indeed, much of what comes out of Microsoft Research is a good example of that...

J.Ja