John Lam on Software: Steve Yegge ported Rails to JavaScript

http://www.iunknown.com/2007/06/steve-yegge-por.html

by elq • 19 years ago

33 16 19 years ago

iunknown.com

brett• 19 years ago

Wow do I want to look through that codebase.

staunch• 19 years ago

Me too. I'd settle for some example code for now though.

byrneseyeview• 19 years ago

Sure, we might go look at framework code sometimes. But it just looks like, well, code. There's usually nothing particularly famous-looking or even glamorous about it. Go look at the source code for Emacs or Rails or Python or Firefox, and it's just a big ball of code. In fact, often as not it's a big hairy ball, and the original author is focused on refactoring or even rewriting big sections of it.

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/07/get-famous-by-not-programming.html

I wonder if he wrote that while worrying about this sort of thing.

gyro_robo3• 19 years ago

Why not the Rails to JavaScript port by another Steve...

http://code.google.com/p/trimpath/wiki/TrimJunction

mynameishere• 19 years ago

Here's where my ignorance shines through once again...but does the javascript that runs on the JVM have proper threading?

Coz, I'm really not sure how anything server-side could work properly with setInterval() or whatever the favored workaround is.

Why did he not use Python?

motoko2• 19 years ago

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/02/next-big-language.html

He didn't use Python because Javascript is the native scripting language for the "next platform," that is, the browser.

Also, he doesn't think that Python is superficially close enough to C and Java to be widely adopted.

inklesspen• 19 years ago

Plus, if you want Rails in Python, well, Pylons is pretty close. Only better.

paul• 19 years ago

Rhino JS is well integrated with the JVM, so it's easy to call back and forth between Java and JS. You basically have access to everything Java has. JS doesn't have an equivalent to "synchronized", but it could easily be added as a function call (since JS has real functions). However, I wouldn't do that way since sticking synchronized blocks all over the place is the wrong solution anyway. Just write your code so that separate threads aren't stepping on eachother's data (and do cross-thread stuff in a carefully controlled manner).

I'm doing my development in Java+JS and it's a pretty nice combination.

zach• 19 years ago

What? Wow. What?!

Okay, that sounds great, but what a bureaucratic-sounding backstory. Seriously, that sounds like what happens in Soviet Russia: languages program you!

motoko2• 19 years ago

No, it's because if Javascript is both the language you write client code AND server code, it could be huge.

jamongkad• 19 years ago

Agreed which could possibly pave the way for offline apps.

menloparkbum• 19 years ago

he certainly looks like he just ported rails to javascript. yikes!

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1188/612490975_5b2f804df2.jpg

aaroniba• 19 years ago

There's a really sweet web application framework called Helma that lets you write entire web apps in javascript, and gives you the JDK through Rhino. The documentation is a little slim, but it's my framework of choice. I don't know why it isn't more popular.

http://dev.helma.org/

gyro_robo3• 19 years ago

Seems like a wasted effort, but an incredible effort nonetheless!

gyro_robo3• 19 years ago

Steve Yen already did it, a couple years ago.

http://code.google.com/p/trimpath/wiki/TrimJunction

run4yourlives• 19 years ago

What's really awesome is that I can turn all 2000 hours of work off by adjusting my preferences. I have the power!! :-)

John Lam on Software: Steve Yegge ported Rails to JavaScript

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