[Web-SIG] JavaScript libraries

[Shannon -jj Behrens]

On 5/2/05, Carlos Ribeiro <carribeiro at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/2/05, Shannon -jj Behrens <jjinux at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It sure would be nice to have a common JavaScript library that we
> > could all share.  People are wanting this for Aquarium, but I really
> > don't want Aquarium to have its own JavaScript library.  It's too much
> > of a niche within a niche.  Do you guys think it'd be possible to use
> > the RoR one?  I've often talked with Donnovan about using LivePage
> > from Nevow.  Do you guys know of any other really solid JavaScript
> > libraries?
> 
> Just for the record.
> 
> I have spent six months writing a web-based workflow framework using
> CherryPy on my own time. I experimented a little bit with several
> templating systems, and one of the main problems that I had was with
> the integration of JavaScript code. I thought, "I want to code in one
> language as much as possible, and that's Python". So I wanted to have
> a templating system that allowed me to forget about writing custom
> Javascript code.
> 
> After lots of painful experiments, I wrote a simple form-based library
> drawing on my experience with Delphi and other event-based toolsets.
> Forms are composed of components; each component has associated
> events. Event handlers are split in two parts: the form library itself
> generates a Javascript callback using an IFrame (the code was borrowed
> almost line-by-line from the example in the Apple's Developers site,
> and worked off the shelf!). This callback in turn is automatically
> associated with the even handler that is written in Python. The system
> was amazingly simple and intuitive. The best part, I didn't had to
> write custom Javascript code; I could rely on Python to handle events
> that were fired into the web browser, using my two-way glue code.

Yes, this sounds like Nevow's LivePage.  I saw Donnovan give a talk on
it both at Bay Piggies and at PyCon, and it's really nice.  I agree
that this is cool stuff!

> All of this was prior to Ajax. I heard about it and it seemed to be
> something along the same lines of the work that I was doing, but at
> that time, I was hired for another project (I am a network architect
> by profession, not a programmer!), and I had to spend the last two
> months reading the latest Cisco manuals :-(

You have my sympathies.

> Now I am beginning to find some time for my happy workflow hacking...
> and things have changed a lot, it seems. I think it's about time for
> it to happen. It may seem a little bit simplistic of my part, but I
> truly believe that the programmer's nirvana can only be attained when
> we manage to hide the dozen different tools that are necessary today
> behind a single & comprehensive framework. It makes no sense to me
> that we have to learn Python, JavaScript, HTML, CSS & SQL -- at a
> minimum! -- to become productive in this profession.
> 
> The situation reminds me something about the beginnings of Windows
> programming; one had to know C, the Windows API, the format of
> resource files, the internals of event handling, memory models... just
> to write a simple application. Tools like VB & Delphi managed to hide
> all this complexity. I just feels that it's about time for it to
> happen for Web programming.

Perhaps you're right.

Best Regards,
-jj

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