What people might be misunderstanding is my motivation here... There are hardly black-and-white choices, and when an engineering/business decision has to be made, it's usually for a particular situation. While the tone might have been a bit harsh, I'm not saying appcelerator sucks and nobody should ever use it. It's just that based on my experience, it is useable (with caveats) for very limited applications. OpenLaszlo does almost exactly the same thing, but as it's from 5 years ago, it uses tech that was all the buzz for serious web apps back then - generates flash from a Java backend, and the flash does the dynamic stuff from XML files you can 'code'. Appcelerator just adapts this to the present day buzz (replaces flash with JS widgets, uses HTML+AJAX instead of flash reloading XML files for the client side logic, instead of LZX markup language you have web expression language, etc). So *IMO* nothing revolutionary there, still the same (questionable) concept, still looks cool, still hard to develop, still hard to maintain, still has a strong lock-in, still a lot of untransferrable knowledge, and that is why I don't see appcelerator succeed (on a large scale) where OpenLaszlo had failed. But then again, I'm still earning my first million bucks, so maybe it's just me who doesn't get it ;)
With regard to toolkits - yes, we should use anything nice that fits our paradigm, but don't shift a paradigm to fit the tool (which is exactly why I don't think much of Silverlight and kin). If there are parts of Appcelerator that could be used to improve web2py, Massimo should use them by all means, but know your stuff, make conceptual & engineering and not buzz choices. Take for example, in my case, PHP. Nobody argues that there are a lot of excellent sites done in PHP, huge userbase, a lot of development, frameworks, etc, etc, and yet, I *feel* there is no way I'm going back to PHP. Why ? PHP was good for doing simple stuff quickly. All the libs in one place, everything is global, you could make a dynamic web page in 2 minutes, and that's what drove LAMP to success. On the high- end, there was no question that for business app, you would use Java. As time progressed, web sites got more complex, and PHP itself went the way of more complexity, object orientation, templates, frameworks, soon namespaces. And here is the catch - in the process of migrating upwards on the business ladder, it just became too unwieldy (for me). The simple sites PHP was good at simply do not exist any more, and all the cruft from the age when quick and dirty was all the rage makes it cumbersome for the large ones (although as we can see the inertia is pretty strong, so PHP is still in high demand). Enter web2py. Python is just so much more elegant and more suitable for development of both system and web applications that when teamed with a nice framework (who said web2py ? :) it becomes my new 'ideal choice' for modern small-to-medium scale web apps. Simple (enough) and Powerful (enough). After a month with Python I didn't want to loose time with Perl again. After a month with django and web2py I didn't want to loose time with PHP (with Zend, Cake and Seagull) again. Do you see where I'm going ? You can do anything in almost any of these tools and languages (appcelerator and openlaszlo included), it's just the question of effort (which translates to money in a business environment), and I feel the sweet spot for effort for today's web apps moving *away* from PHP and into the land of web2py and it's kin. Of course, you might disagree with my points above, they are just opinions, anyone can (and should) have them. As for bias, I know I'm biased, I tend to get biased towards things that make my engineering sense purr and generally make my life as a programmer easier :) I'm sorry if I stepped on any toes, it wasn't my intention, just wanted to share a few thoughts, sorry again if it got too rant-ish. On Oct 29, 9:41 pm, JorgeRpo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Well I havent used appcelerator either. > > But I found your opinion very personal and subjective. I am not going > to argue your points at this time. > > You dont seem to be criticzicing appcelerator buth the logic behind > its existence. > > So you dont agree neither with MS Silverlight, Mozilla Prism, Google > GWT, and others. > > But those frameworks are here and its better to take advantage of them > than to ignore them. > > On Oct 29, 9:54 am, achipa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > <disclaimer> > > I have not used appcelerator in any real life projects and just went > > through the docs/tutorials/screencasts. I did use half a dozen web > > oriented languages, frameworks and templating systems in the past ten > > years. > > </disclaimer> > > > Hate to be the Yin of all topics, but I find appceletator to be a bit > > heavy on the buzz side. What I think is the worst error in the concept > > is the Web Expression Language part. It somehow feels super cool and > > super wrong to me at the same time. It reintroduces program logic in > > places people were fighting years to get it out of, and doing it in an > > unreadable form (as it pretends to be html for syntax purposes, which > > is worse than any JS toolkit). This means two more things IMO - *real* > > designers won't be able to touch it, and it will have a strong lock-in > > factor as a design/UI made in it cannot be ported to any other > > framework (which is why all the JS toolkits actually make sense as you > > can adapt them to any underlying backend). 5 years ago I'd be super > > impressed with appcelerator, but now it seems to me as an approach > > with a dark side potential. Conceptually, it feels a lot like > > (Open)Laszlo, also a super cool and simultaneously super wrong > > approach. > > > On Oct 29, 2:04 pm, mdipierro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Thank you for your comments. > > > > I like appcelerator. I am reserving time over the christmas break to > > > learn more about it. Something may happen. > > > > Massimo > > > > On Oct 29, 2:38 am, Dunsun <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > Hi, > > > > > It would be great to integrate Appcelerator with web2py. > > > > It would give us a superiority over all other frameworks. > > > > Web2py is clearly the best framework for python and Appcelerator is > > > > easy and very efficient way to add RIA and SOA to web2py. > > > > > Any plans for the future ? > > > > Thank you. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "web2py Web Framework" group. 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