It was fun going going this evening to La Cantine to meet some of the speakers for Google Developer Day Paris.
I only heard about the conference last week, much too late to register (they are apparently expecting 600 people?!). So that was a rare chance to talk to some of them.
- talked briefly to Didier Girard who I had already met through ConcordiAgile; he will of course be talking about Web Portals at Valtech Days in October
- met Googler Chris Chabot; he is working on Shindig, a web engine for social network mini-apps that implements OpenSocial. Though he has a point when saying that there are many more people on social networks that are committed OpenSocial (he mentioned 400 million people, I think) as opposed to proprietary ones such as Facebook (100 millions), I think success is not in the bag yet. There just seems to be a lot of incentive for some networks to provide “advanced, but not quite compatible features”. A repeat of the Unix fiasco is still likely
- also met Google Patrick Chanezon; I pushed CITCON to him (and to Chris)
- ex-Valtech Bruno Guedes was there too! I hadn”t seen him in ages; working with Didier Girard now
- and of course Antonio, who just seem to be everywhere; we seem to have found an agreement for a date for a BarCamp with Paris JUG
Finally, despite what many seemed to think, drinks were not offered by Google, but by PilotSystems, Plone specialists. Thanks, guys!
Like everyone else, we are interested in new frameworks to design richer web interfaces, usually known as RIA – Rich Internet Applications.
Most people will agree that there are three big contenders, but they all have limitations:
Too many choices, by Orin Optiglot
- GWT, though my favorite as a long time Java developer, is still limited in the quality of interfaces it produces; it requires the use of third-party libraries, but there are not that many of them, and some have been tainted by changes in their licenses. Also, Google does not seem to put that much energy into it; in many ways, it still seems to be a one-man operation. However, my guess is that it is adequate to design classic interfaces, similar to the one designed in AWT/Swing/SWT.
- Flex might the strongest contender to many, as they have all Adobe’s might behind them (unlike GWT). But it is clearly a descendant of Flash and as such might appeal most directly to web developers (as opposed to classic Java developers). However, they did make a lot of efforts to get closer to the Java crowd. My feeling on this one is that people like me might be good at working out the server part, but should still leave the UI part to web developers.
- JavaFX might seem like an obvious choice for a Java developer, but it is still too young (1.0 to be released this fall) and does not have that much mindshare yet; it also requires a plugin to be installed. That said, at least one of my colleagues is very enthusiastic about it.
This list wouldn’t in fact be complete if I didn’t also mention:
- SilverLight, which is really the answer from Microsoft to Flex. I don’t have a strong opinion on it, apart from the fact that it also requires a plugin on the browser, which is a serious disadvantage (just like with JavaFX). Many people upgrade to Flex while upgrading their Flash plugin, which they have to do anyway, now that there are so many Flash animations. Silverlight has no such immediate upgrade path.
All of those frameworks are good at avoiding the complexity of writing JavaScript code, either by writing it for you (GWT) or by using a specific engine on the browser (Flex, Java FX, SilverLight), which has the drawback of requiring the installation of a plugin (which might not even exist for some systems).
A relative of mine who is working at a small software house however points me to
- JQuery. The assumption here is that it is vain to work around JavaScript; it aims at making it easier to code JS. So you still have a good chance to stumble on the many difficulties of writing JS. On the other hand, you do get to have a much better control of the final code. At any rate, JQuery does seem to be getting some buzz these days, including from my colleagues.
So, which framework should we/you choose? I think neither has a clear lead so far. So you might want to apply a set-based strategy, as recommended in Lean Software Development. Meaning that, when in doubt, implement all plausible strategies, and decide later which one to standardize on, once the dust settles. In fact, it is very possible that several of them will co-exist, or even integrate with each others.
If you do want to limit the set of strategies, my personal choice would be those three:
I just came back from 3-week holidays, and I am still coming to grips with all the news that I had missed.
Among them, GWT 1.5 is finally stable! The biggest feature is compatibility with Java 1.5.
This is great, and I hope that even more people will turn to this fantastic platform.
Everybody seems to agree that GWT is great. However, one point that has long been considered a problem is its lack of compatibility with JDK 1.5 (though many people did not really understand that GWT actually still works fine in many cases).
Anyway, I just heard from the JavaPosse Boys that GWT 1.5 beta has finally been released, and is now compatible with JDK 1.5! Rejoice! If you are starting a project with GWT, this is a great time to deploy the beta version (otherwise, you might want to wait for a more stable version).
I have long wanted to attend a BarCamp but it’s not easy to get yourself to attend a conference on a Saturday after a whole week of work. I was also turned off by an impression that the crowd was interested in creating communities on the web, or micro-credit. Worthwhile themes, to be sure, but not currently part of my interests.
This time, what made the difference was that it was organized by Sun France. Also, it was a chance to catch up with Jean-Laurent.
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