I think that ignores the underlying complexity of developing complex
RIAs today. I would take any of the apps I've developed on the job over
the past 5+ years and put them up against any out there in terms of
complexity... when I talk to other developers about what they're doing
it's nearly always the case that what they describe is orders of
magnitude less complex than some of the project I've been involved in.
And all the while I've had to mentor teams to get them up to speed so
they could develop these applications with me. I'm not saying any of
that to try and be impressive, I'm saying that so I can then say this:
the paradigm shift of doing heavy client-side AJAX-based RIA development
when you are used to doing the "classic" server-heavy model of web
development isn't as simple as choosing a good library and doing some
simple calls as you show. Things just aren't that simple once you move
beyond "level 1", so to speak :)
Now, I suppose you could say that then a taglib approach is quickly
going to become not up to the task either, which I'd agree with. You
could further say that if that's the case, why not just start by
learning a good library and forget about tags. There's some degree of
correctness in that I think. But I've seen it time and time again: good
Java developers who transition to a client-side model just seem to have
trouble "getting it", and whether you use tags or a library directly it
doesn't seem to matter. Things that I, and I suspect you, would take
for granted seem difficult for them to comprehend... things like
following the applications' flow when things are moving from server to
client, timing issues, dealing with security, not to mention the still
less-than-optimal debugging capabilities available.
But what I've *also* seen time and time again is that a tag-based
approached is easier for them to wrap their brains around initially than
using a library directly because it's closer to what they already know.
Think about all you're taking for granted when you write
$("#content).load(url); ... you assume they know about the DOM, that
they understand the concept of a URL's response not overwriting the
entire page... and what does that call look like when you have to deal
with error callbacks? And timeout conditions? And security
constraints? Is it still as simple as just that? If so then jQuery is
more than good, it's freakin' miraclulous!
Having a taglib, at least initially, that keeps those details away from
them is a good thing... yes, they'll quickly outgrow them, but then
they'll quickly come to the point you're at and want to use the
libraries directly, and will at that point no longer be the huge mental
leap that it was at the start.
Frank
--
Frank W. Zammetti
Author of "Practical DWR 2 Projects"
and "Practical JavaScript, DOM Scripting and Ajax Projects"
and "Practical Ajax Projects With Java Technology"
for info: apress.com/book/search?searchterm=zammetti&act=search
Java Web Parts - javawebparts.sourceforge.net
Supplying the wheel, so you don't have to reinvent it!
My "look ma, I have a blog too!" blog: zammetti.com/blog
Bob Tiernay wrote:
Having a simple taglib-based approach to do some of the more common
AJAX-y things, maybe some widgets here and there too, means that Java
developers can leverage their existing skills without having to take
the plunge into heavy client-side development, which I can say from
the experience of mentoring some junior-level teams can be a very
difficult hill to climb, regardless of what whiz-bang library you
choose to use to try and make it easier. The very nature of
Javascript, for many Java developers, is a difficult leap to make.
Today's whiz-bang libraries make things dead simple to perform ajax
requests. For instance, with jQuery to get the contents of a url and
place it in a div element #content:
$("#content).load(url);
I guess I fail to see how even junior-level team members would have a
difficult learning curve with this. Learning jQuery quickly is easy
to do and is much of the appeal.
And as others have mentioned, the libraries such as jQuery have a
great user base, with much to offer in terms of support. Just
checkout the #jquery freenode irc channel, for instance.
Part of being a developer is learning new technologies, and if those
technologies are easy to use and powerful, then that's where the ROI
really pays off. We should be nudging people in these directions with
better documentation on how to best integrate with existing libraries.
This would be a far better place to focus energy, imo.
Bob
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