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An interview with 280 North on Objective-J and Cappuccino

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Re: An interview with 280 North on Objective-J and Cappuccino

#2

Post by yan »

280North guys did what I always thought would be an awesome and useful undertaking and implemented it better than I thought could be done. I am talking about ObjectiveJ/Cappuccino specifically, but 280Slides is a whole different story. Everything runs snappy and I don't remember last time I was so impressed with so few people's worth of work.

I can see a lot more being done in this direction, but I am just in awe in how well this was done so far in the time they had.

Re: An interview with 280 North on Objective-J and Cappuccino

#5

Post by boucher »

andreyf wrote: post #4

Why did you chose to do Objective-J -> JS processing in the browers? For sake of speed, wouldn't it be a good idea to do it server-side and then just serve the JS?

Actually, we use both methods. You can preprocess the code ahead of time if you want, and serve content that way. We do this for our core frameworks (AppKit and Foundation). Most of our application code is not preprocessed though. One of the benefits of being able to run without having to "compile" (which is essentially what having to preprocess ahead of time is) is that you have a much more dynamic development environment. You can change code, hit refresh, and see your changes immediately reflected, instead of compiling and waiting.

Re: An interview with 280 North on Objective-J and Cappuccino

#6

Post by tlrobinson »

andreyf wrote: post #4

Why did you chose to do Objective-J -> JS processing in the browers? For sake of speed, wouldn't it be a good idea to do it server-side and then just serve the JS?

The main advantage of doing it in the browser is for the developer: you don't need the explicit compile step: just write code, save it, refresh the browser. It also enables neat things like a REPL.

That said, the nice thing about writing the preprocessor in JavaScript was we can do preprocessing ahead of time on the server, if we need to. However, doing it client-side is not as slow as you would expect.

edit: Ross beat me to it, but we said basically the same thing

Re: An interview with 280 North on Objective-J and Cappuccino

#7

Post by [deleted] »

boucher wrote: post #5
andreyf wrote: post #4

Why did you chose to do Objective-J -> JS processing in the browers? For sake of speed, wouldn't it be a good idea to do it server-side and then just serve the JS?

Actually, we use both methods. You can preprocess the code ahead of time if you want, and serve content that way. We do this for our core frameworks (AppKit and Foundation). Most of our application code is not preprocessed though. One of the benefits of being able to run without having to "compile" (which is essentially what having to preprocess ahead of time is) is that you have a much more dynamic development envir…

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