Rails is just an API • Hacker News Board

Re: Rails is just an API

#111

Post by moe » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 9:03 PM UTC

n8agrin wrote: post #110

moe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't "they could serve direct links as static HTML" the whole point of this discussion? For me the point of the discussion was the claim that the first-load performance of a fat-client app is inherently terrible. This is false. It is a straightforward optimization problem. Twitter didn't care to optimize. I don't think it is under debate that the overall responsiveness (after first-load) in a client-side app is head…

You're making a lot of assumptions that are unfounded. What you're suggesting is usually called progressive enhancement. Yeah it's great, but sadly when you are using a system like Spine, Backbone or Ember, it's not just a matter of "endless Firebug sessions" to resolve the initial bootstrap problem. No one claims that this is not possible, nor is anyone "crying foul". On the contrary I know first hand how much of th…

but sadly when you are using a system like Spine, Backbone or Ember, it's not just a matter of "endless Firebug sessions" to resolve the initial bootstrap problem.

Oh, what else is the matter then?

back it up

You mean like you just backed up your claim of Spine/Backbone/Ember having some mythical, unspecified problem that prevents bootstrap optimization?

Re: Rails is just an API

#112

Post by mark_l_watson » Thu, Mar 22, 2012, 10:25 PM UTC

instakill wrote: post #18

So what's the future for Rails? If you talk to the likes of 37Signals and GitHub, it's pjax and server side rendering. This involves fetching a partial of HTML from the server with Ajax, updating the page and changing the URL with HTML5 pushState. I really hope not. Rails is awesome and I love it to bits, but I will hate to have to use a framework that is massively invested in Ajax/Pjax. The reason for this is simple…

A bit off topic, but: I find that either Rails + pjax or Clojure/Noir + pjax really hits a sweet spot of ease of coding, not too much Javascript, and an AJAXy user experience. Worth spending a little time experimenting with.

Re: Rails is just an API

#113

Post by eli_gottlieb » Fri, Mar 23, 2012, 3:41 AM UTC

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #109

jiggy2011 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are 4 reasons we are here. 1) Developers are worried that a user won't try their app if they have to install something on their computer. 2) Compatibility , support anything that can render HTML , although this may no longer be the case with the amount of chrome only apps I see. 3) Firewalls, you can get out on port 80 pretty much anywhere, that random port number you decided to use for your app not so…

The problem with Java applets and Flash is that they are a broken model inside another broken model - they shoe-horn their own VMs to run applications inside a browser. It's the ultimate hack. The web, as it was originally envisioned, makes perfect sense: HTTP, URIs and hypertext to provide navigable content, period. On the other hand, building interactive applications by manipulating the DOM while reinveinting UI pa…

Frankly, I'm wondering how nice a GUI you can write inside Inferno. Just have everyone install an Inferno client and serve your app as a mountable filesystem containing the VM code to JIT as a binary file.

Re: Rails is just an API

#114

Post by ksec » Fri, Mar 23, 2012, 2:58 PM UTC

eyko wrote: post #95

DrJokepu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DOM manipulation can be very expensive, especially on IE 6 and 7.

And even in Firefox and Chrome. In fact, I'd ask most of these web application developers to try browsing the modern web on a relatively modern computer: my 1ghz athlon with 1GB RAM… Even twitter is dead slow. DOM manipulation is slow, CSS transitions are slow, infinite scrolling is a memory hog, fake smooth scrolling (disregarding the browser's native scrolling) is slow… everything is just a pain.

That is another part i like about Server Side Rendering. You have much more control. Rendering Web Page would work well with your 1Ghz Machine.