MacBreak the SproutCore Edition
Posted on June 18th, 2008
by peter
MacBreak weekly presented a in-depth analysis of SproutCore and what it means to the internet community.
http://thisweekintech.com/mbw94
Many of the conclusions are very insightful and right on and the rest make for a terrific story.
I just listened to this yesterday. I believe that Apple + Sproutcore is going to be HUGE. Rich apps in the cloud that will keep working even if you are not connected and will sync up when you are connected again - thats huge! Cross platform computing in the cloud. Keep up the good work!
I don’t see where/how this kills flash. If anything it forks (read rips off) ruby on rails.
@jason - Sproutcore addresses a completely different problem than Ruby on Rails. The focus of Rails is about making server-side web development simple. SproutCore is a client-side MVC framework for simplifying the development of for RIA-style (no page refresh) applications.
Plus its awesome!
@jason,
read beyond the surface instructions. SproutCore enables a rich user interface that is easy to develop on, is not proprietary, and is based on standards so will not break in 6 months. it does not model your domain (aka business logic).
Rails does not attempt to be great at writing a brilliant a user interface. It has shipped with Prototype and Scriptaculous and built helpers (rjs) for generating javascript with ruby (to help rubyists do Ajax). There are already many other templating engines that people are using who don’t like the standard .erb.html style that Rails uses to generate views.
I would still use Rails models and controllers (MC, not the V) to model a complicated domain, build RESTful interfaces that send XML or JSON to the client for SproutCore to handle. That is where Rails excels.
To get something similar happening with Flash, you will be building in Flex, which I have not tried but it looks like a lot more XML than I care to handle. Plus it costs $$ for the Pro version. Pro version of Rails is and always will be free.
“I would still use Rails models and controllers (MC, not the V) to model a complicated domain, build RESTful interfaces that send XML or JSON to the client for SproutCore to handle. That is where Rails excels.”
Now that is what would be awesome. And for someone new to Rails I would love to see a tutorial on how to set that up with a simple example application. I also think that would clear up the whole Rails vs SC confusion out there - it’s not one or the other.