I’m now hosting my own blog at http://lukesh.com/blog/ — This wordpress.com blog is officially deprecated.
I’ve been intentionally learning how to develop using Sproutcore for about a month now, so I’ve been more aware of the buzz about it, and I have to say that most things I read are missing the point about the value promise of Sproutcore.
The impetus behind my learning is that it is an application development framework for the HTML5/JavaScript platform, versus the Flash Platform that I’m used to developing for. The key here is that it is an application development framework. It is not another DOM access library, widget set, or MVC, and it shouldn’t even be compared to them. It’s not a “Flash-killer“. It’s not even a “Flex-killer” per se, although in my mind it is an alternative in part.
Flash is just a display technology. Flex boils down to just a widget set and bindings library. Intrinsically, Flex lacks a good application development pattern. That’s partially why Seppuku is a viable alternative to maintaining the average Flex app built by someone else. There’s no built-in MVC, or unit testing strategy or IoC methodology.
I realize that Adobe’s building in support for FlexUnit4 in Flash Builder 4 / Flex 4 SDK which is wonderful. Michael Labriola et al are doing a fantastic work there that is critical for the Flex project. These necessessities have been the mother of invention with MVC frameworks like Cairgorm, Mate, FlightFramework, and HydraMVC for MVC. Lack of IoC has also inspired Mate, and Flight, as well as the excellent Swiz framework, and the DI part of HydraFramework. And, don’t even get me started on server interaction complexities.
I say all that to illustrate that the Flex development stack really fundamentally consists of Flash -> Flex (widget set, bindings, themes) -> MVC -> IoC -> Unit Testing -> Development environment (IDE, code tools, code gen) -> Support (documentation, community). I feel like that stack is essential to consistently producing good applications built using the Flex SDK, and I think other companies realize this too.
If you look at what Microsoft is doing with Silverlight, they are positioning themselves to own that stack, and not only that, but they have the advantage of not being the first in that they can fix all the things that Adobe has done wrong. It all looks really promising except for a few things, which I’ll discuss in a moment.
Let me begin by saying that contrary to popular belief, I don’t necessarily enjoy being married to Adobe and the Flash Platform. I really do embrace the ideology of an open, standards-driven web. The market has helped drive Flex because you really could deliver a richer “desktop-like experience” on the web, spawning the RIA buzzword. HTML5 and browser implementations are undeniably slower to progress than a company-owned platform like Adobe has. It was the evolution of Flash as a vector graphics rendering plugin for graphically fun and interesting content that facilitated it’s insane propagation, not it’s ability to draw text inputs and combo boxes.
Ok, back to Silverlight. First bad thing: you are locked into Microsoft. That’s a bad thing, just like being locked into Adobe is a bad thing. However, I would argue that specifically for web development, being locked into Microsoft is better than being locked into Adobe. They own the whole stack, and if you drink the MS Kool-Aid you never have to really leave Visual Studio. Also, Silverlight plays much nicer than Flash with the HTML DOM, which means you as the developer have a greater level of flexibility in how you implement Silverlight as part of your solution.
Second bad thing: you have to work in Windows. It’s not just that I really dislike working in Windows; it’s more that I dislike that I’m forced to. At least Adobe provides Windows, Mac, and (kinda) Linux support for their IDE and Player. I sincerely believe that a web development platform should be OS agnostic.
Ok, wasn’t I writing about Sproutcore? Oh yeah. I’m already way past the tl;dr threshold for most people, but there’s a lot to blab about discuss. All that background was to make the point that an application development platform is more than the display layer and widgets, and even goes beyond the language you’re using. I beleive the fundamentals of an application development platform are:
- A prescriptive methodology: You or other developers need to be able to look at your source and not have to figure out how you’ve interpreted solutions to basic problems.
- Consistent development workflow: You or other developers should be able to intrinsically understand how your application can be scaled or altered as it evolves.
- MVC methodology: You or other developers should be able to intrinsically understand how your application separates concerns.
- Data access consistency: You or other developers should strive to unify data access methodology so that applications are easier to debug regardless of server technology.
- Unit tests: The application platform should provide a way of structuring unit tests for all aspects of the platform, including establishing Fixtures for data access logic.
- Build tools: Scaffolding, configuration, etc. tools should minimize “monkey work” and give the developer the ability to go from thought to implementation as quickly as possible.
- Good documentation: it goes without saying that docs should ideally help the new learner ramp up, and serve as a reference to experienced devs.
- Helpful community: I could write an entire post about this one based on my experiences in the Ruby community, but it is critical to have mentors and people who are willing to accept that fact that you are an annoying little n00b and require hand holding like a little child as you ask questions and sound like an idiot for a few days. Also, when you are off the teet and developing like a madman, you need intelligent people to bounce ideas off of. If you go from n00b to the smartest one in the community in a week, you’ve got problems with the community.
Granted, I’ve only been evaluating Sproutcore as I’ve been finding time around regular work, holidays, and spending time with my family, but I’m definitely over the 0 – 1 level of proficiency and actually starting to build things and ask real questions, and I can say that so far, when I need to do something, it feels like Sproutcore has provided for it in a very logical way. All my personal requirements for a good framework are accounted for. I’m not going to port HydraFramework to Sproutcore, because it’s unnecessary in Sproutcore; it already has a wonderful MVC and bindings methodology. I’m not scrounging for a unit testing methodology; it also has been provided for. Skinning / theming couldn’t be easier. Build tools are great. I can develop on my 486 running Ubuntu if I wanted to. There’s always someone idling in #sproutcore who is helpful. The docs are great. It may not have achieved feature parity with the Flex development stack yet but it shows tremendous promise.
So again, the question isn’t Sproutcore vs. jQuery. In fact, you can (and probably will) use jQuery if you develop Sproutcore apps. The question really isn’t even Sproutcore vs. Flash vs. Silverlight, but it’s so easy to frame it up like that. The point of Sproutcore is that it provides the beginnings of an end-to-end application development strategy in HTML5 that competes with Adobe’s Flash Platform (Flash + Flex + Cairngorm + FlexUnit) and Silverlight’s presentation layer and tools.
There are a few additional things I want to point out. I’m not saying it’s the only way by any means. You can write an open standards desktop experience using any recipe you’d like. Maybe my point is that I feel that choosing an application development platform is more than the sum of its parts.
I have also been evaluating Cappuccino by 280 North. For all intents and purposes, it competes directly with Sproutcore, and I’m not blatantly ignoring it. However, my #1 hangup with it is the Objective-J abstraction. I understand using Objective-C for Cocoa development. I understand JavaScript for web development. But to me, I see not much more than a syntactical advantage for Cocoa developers as the point of Objective-J. For me, it makes more sense to stick with JavaScript as JavaScript. I’m going to try to keep my eye on it, especially the Atlas project.
I’d definitely be interested in hearing your experiences with Sproutcore or your own recipe for RIA *choke* or Desktop Experience type applications. I’ll also try to post more details as I continue evaluating.
From the “don’t-beat-your-head-against-the-same-wall” department: Here’s the original situation:
1. .NET class (MyContainerType) with a public List<MyChildType> Data { get; set; }
2. Flex has both IMyContainerType and IMyChildType and their corresponding value object classes.
3. Both deserialize properly when service method calls return either class directly, but NOT the MyChildType objects in the Data property of MyContainerType; they return as simple AS3 Objects.
The problem is that unless you refer to the class “MyChildType” somewhere in your project, the Flash runtime has no idea that the “MyChildType” exists. Typically, you’d refer to this class in a view or something, so this problem is very esoteric and you most likely won’t encounter it, but if you do, keep this in mind.
The safest thing you can do is mention the class you intend for your ArrayCollection to contain in your value object (in lieu of Flex Generics) as follows:
Ensure that the compiler includes the Class that the ArrayCollection will contain.
First, click here to view a quick demo of the problem. (Source here). When the lists load, roll over one of the items labeled “something” and notice the hover behavior.
The problem is, that these Lists are bound to and Array and an ArrayCollection of Strings (which are immutable in AS3). Likewise, if multiple entries in an Array referenced the same object, the same issue would occur.
This is a particularly annoying implementation challenge, where you might commonly want to bind an Array of String to a List. This may or may not actually be a bug–well it might be, in that the requirement for uniqueness in dataProviders isn’t very well documented–but it is consistent with how Arrays work in AS3. If you have two strings in an ArrayCollection, for example, the only way to retrieve a particular value is to do so by index; you cannot call .getItem(“stringvalue”) because the collection has no idea which one you are referring to.
The workaround is either to wrap each item in a new object, such that [{label: "string value"}, {label: "string value"}] so that each object actually exists as a unique object in memory, or to wrap ArrayCollection so that it recognizes primitives and wraps them automatically.
This “bug” is being tracked here: https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-17182 reported by Albert Chang.
This effect was brought to my attention by Winton De Shong.
HydraMVC has become a part of HydraFramework. The source is on http://github.com/lukesh and you can read more about the framework at http://hydraframework.com. More later!
Want to growl in your Flex apps? Try this junk. FlexGrowl is a component that allows you to create growl-like notifications in your Flex apps. If you don’t know, Growl is an integrated notification system for OSX that listens for notifications from registered applications. It looks like this:
FlexGrowl implements this type of interface for Flex; it looks like this (click here for working demo):
However, you can customize the growl notifications to look however you’d like. The notifications shown above are created with Degrafa (which, by the way, is awesome). Click here to download the source. Let me know what you think!
…And it seems to be the magic number for now. I’ve been using this version for a while and it seems stable and complete enough to actually use f’real. If you don’t know what it is, click here to read about it and get it.
Besides all the obvious goals for HydraMVC (read about them on the website), I have a few big plans for the framework. Firstly, I’d absolutely love to get an AIR debug console written for it. I just ran across this gem today, which is pretty close to what I would like to develop for Hydra, except that instead of debugging the AS3 code per se, it would debug the application logic of the MVC by trapping the paths of Notifications as they are handled by the various actors in the MVC. Since De MonsterDebugger is open source, there’s nothing preventing me from actually augmenting it with a HydraMVC debug console. Talk about pure hotness. Anyway, with deadlines (seriously) looming, don’t look for this anytime this month. But it will happen. Mark my words.
Secondly, something that would also be wonderful if it was integrated with a debug console would be a unit testing interface. That’s all I’m gonna say. See, the beauty of it is that we could just compile out two HydraMVC SWC’s–a debug version and a production version. The debug version would provide the hooks for the debugger and the production version would bypass them. Then, when you’re ready to deploy a HydraMVC application, just switch SWC’s. I wonder if we could even make this a compiler directive for a single SWC? Hmm… Anyway, I’m super excited. This framework is not only pretty cool as-is, but represents to me a ton of realizable potential that would really provide a very accessible, learnable, structured way to develop medium to large, scalable, debuggable Flex applications. Stay tuned. Download HydraMVC and let me know what you think.
I think I have a decent workaround to this old bug, where you run into formatting problems if you want to use a custom borderSkin on a Panel or Alert. (I especially wanted to use a skin created with Degrafa.) In addition, I wanted to set up something where I could create a generic Panel skin to use throughout my application, but also use the skin for Alerts without it messing up the title bar. Even though it’s over a year old, this post is still getting remarks about the layout bug.
Admittedly, my workaround is a total hack. However, that’s why it’s called a workaround. I’ve been using it without issues, and wanted to make it public. Click here to download a Flex project archive with the solution files. This is what it looks like:
Custom Panel / Alert Skin
Some really interesting things are happening at andCulture these days. In addition to rocking the CSS/HTML/jQuery/AJAX suite of technologies, we’re building libraries for Flex like never before–using Flex for both back-end application-y RIA software and also as the framework for very rich UIs that look nothing like an app.
We’ve been consuming data from .NET, both SOAP and AMF, and from PHP via AMFPHP. Jason Kichline (@jkichline) has been doing some really interesting things with building abstraction classes in a project codenamed SudzC (SOAP classes for Obj-C / iPhone).
For most (ok, basically all) of our Flex projects we use PureMVC, which is elegant, language agnostic, and quite minimal. However, it’s not without its drawbacks. Being language agnostic is nice when you want to develop for multiple platforms and not have to switch out your paradigm-parser, but not so hot when you actually want to take advantage of a platform’s stuff–like for instance, Flex’s event model. PureMVC rolls their own Observer pattern, which is really nerdy and wot not, but sometimes, you just want to use event bubbling / capture. And not have to implement Pipes.
Another interesting challenge of extracting a framework is finding the balance of modularity in encapsulation, and ease of use, so your team can actually build stuff quickly with it. For instance, we’ve got some solid application logic in our MVC, but you might want to switch out where the data actually comes from and not have to trust the developer to ensure that the Notifications are all where they need to be.
Screengrab showing basic package structure of AdeptivMVC
Our answer was kind of a crazy synthesis of a solution for each of these problems. First, we wrote a Plugin / Provider methodology for our framework, not unlike the Provider metaphor in .NET. So, our Model (Proxies) tell the data where to *go*, and *how* it interacts with the application, but Providers interact with the Proxies to actually *get* the data. Pretty nifty. Oh, and while we were at it, we kinda just rewrote PureMVC.
We’ll see if it works out. Basically, you know those times where if you have to trip over that creaky stair *one more time* you’re going to go totally ape and remodel the entire downstairs? That’s exactly what happened.
My mission was to take out all the annoying things about PureMVC and keep all the cool things. Kinda like Palm did with Pre and the iPhone.
Testing it basically involved taking an existing PMVC application and seeing A. how difficult it was to retrofit the new framework and, B. make sure it still works. So far, retrofitting the “AdeptivMVC”, as I’m calling it, is totally easy to do, and regression testing seems to prove that stuff still works.
Now, we also get the added niceties of being able to use Singleton proxies if you want, and have multiple observers in a many-to-many relationship within the app. I added a “Relay” pattern in the mix verus the Multion thing that is used in PMVC, which basically makes things a hierarchy which allows for some neat event bubbling tricks.
I’ll try to get some demos and things up, maybe work on the Adeptiv framework initiative on adeptiv.com, and maybe even have some time to sleep in between doing billable work! Afterburners, engage.
Warning–non tech-related, quasi-philosophical, meta-existential, blah blah, so read at your own risk. Subtitled, need to write a technology post so this gets off my home page.
I can’t sleep. I’m kept awake by a series of haunting revelations in the form of what I can only describe as “the right questions” that seem to explain the nature of life and reality in a profound juxtaposition of perfect clarity and haunting mystery.
We all die. All of us must wrestle and come to terms with the fundamental mysteries of reality. Whether you call it philosophy or religion, something needs to click into place inside our brains–a framework on which we can use to reconcile what seems to be the ultimate futility of life itself as the years blow by with such callous speed.
What is life, anyway? Why do we consider the concept of our individual lives to be fundamentally equal to our conscious mind?
We say that a fire dies. Is the life of the fire it’s own existence, or is it more deeply, the consuming of the wood, and the eminence of heat and light? I tremble as I think about it! We clench our consciousness as if it were the essence of life! Somehow we are so afraid to lose it, that if we die, go into the ground, lose our ability to traverse through time, feel, interact, reason–that we DIE. Is that death!? Maybe not!
Our bodies are just husks–sublime, mechanical devices that burn food. So are our brains, our minds, and our consciousnesses, that was born at a period of time, lives through periods of time, and will at a period of time, die. Does the fact that we die at one period of time negate the fact that we are alive at another?! If the nature of our existence transcends time, when the time comes that we die, are we not still alive?! (That is, we are no longer conscious, but our existence has been etched into the fabric of space-time!) Our choices forever impact the universe, and CANNOT BE REVERSED.
We, dead, are a four-dimensional being, a being who’s existence simply IS. Life now is a process of growing that being. Our growth is complete when we die. Then we exist.
When a fire dies, the heat and light it emits exist, and have permanent impact. The life of the flame is not defined essentially by its own self-awareness.
Eternal life–what is it? Jesus defines it as simply, “knowing God”. Does this confuse you?! How can I hear this and not feel the uncanny mystery of this truth at the core of my assumptions about reality? Life, is simply knowing God? This begs a redefinition of the very word, meaning, and nature of life itself.
What is consciousness? Why is it so important to us? Self-awareness, reason, memories. We somehow place our identities in how we feel and what makes us laugh. What gives us the framework to do this? It’s as if a flame would base its value on some obscure properties of its existence rather than the heat and light it emits, is it not!? So we die and are no longer conscious in time. What does it matter?! We say that we “have lived”–can we not say at the moment of death, “I now LIVE”?! I have completed my growth through time, and I now EXIST?! Is not this four-dimensional being of our lives not OUR VERY SOUL?!
I move to separate the seemingly fundamental equality of the terms life, consciousness, identity, and soul.
I move to think of time as it is–equal in dimensional tangibility as height, width and depth. We can only see a slice of time at once with our current faculties, and this limitation is the construct of what we so dearly cling to as “consciousness”.
Our choices are IRREVOCABLE. They have such a profound impact on our identity! If we make a choice yesterday, and it’s a bad one, we shake it off, and say, “well, I’m a new man today”–as if our identity is limited to this slice of time. If every day is a ring that we stack on a post, unique in size and shape, at the end of our lives we will see a sculpture of individual identity.
We are fluid beings, and can only grow and change so much in each slice of time–like a fire rapidly changes shape, but slowly grows from a small flame, to a giant bonfire, to embers, to ashes. We are instructed to daily “renew our minds.” This terminology is just adequate. Every immeasurable slice of time that passes, not only do our thoughts and choices define what we think in the next slice, but they are building and growing what someday will define us as our identity. Our consciousness thereof is questionable as we define consciousness.
I laugh inside when religions define the afterlife so neatly wrapped–”oh, I’ll see them in Heaven”. YOU HAVE NOT A CLUE how you will see, if you will see, what you will see. I’m sure even more today than ever that the book of Revelation is more profound truth than we can attempt to rationally deserialize from the “three-dimensionally-flattened” view of John’s revelations. It’s like flatting a three-dimensional object to a two-dimensional drawing and attempting to examine it’s backside.
Whether you ascribe to a theistic or non-theistic world view, you must come to reconcile life in the contexts of origin, meaning, purpose and destiny. The questions of consciousness, ethics, and what happens after you die simply must be addressed. I say this, because even if you can somehow brush them off now as if you don’t care, you will care sooner or later. I’m not saying all this to proselytize, or to “save you”–this is simply a self-serving act of somehow attempting to articulate the rage inside! Tonight feels like the culmination of years of thought to me, so inadequately expressed, yet, to me, life-defining. Even if you don’t believe in God, think of the wonder of the ability to transcend time and experience the essence of the dimension of time all at once–what it must look like. The timelines of all the men and women of history, their interaction, your life–all visible at once as a sculpture entitled “humankind”.
