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I had selected sproutcore as a framework right before Ember forked from sproutcore. I am left uncertain of which way to go and a bit frustrated in the apparent dilution of efforts caused by the fragmentation - as rarely does that lead to better things. The efforts of Sproutcore 2.0 (now Ember) seemed to be going in the right direction of modularization and reuse of other javasript components (jQuery), however it is really unclear from an outside view why the two efforts had to split... couldn't we have modular code, and a widget library module too?
The main questions are:
What are the effective differences between the two efforts?
What is history of the split?
What is sproutcore future, where is it going now?
Is Ember going develop to be a complete replacement for sproutcore?
As someone who has both a Sproutcore app and an Ember app close to a production launch, I'll take a stab at your questions (re-ordered for clarity). All of the below is what I've observed with no inside knowledge. A bit of it is speculation, so I've enabled wiki mode on this answer, so that more informed people can correct details.
What is history of the split?
Here is what I've pieced together:
SproutCore was created by Charles Jolley's company Sproutit as the basis of their Mailroom product in 2007. Jolley later joined Apple and Sproutcore was used to build the original web apps for Mobile Me. The mandate was to recreate the experience of Mac apps like Mail and iCal, and that effort continues on Sproutcore today with iCloud.
Jolley left Apple and formed a company called Strobe in San Francisco with a vision in part to leverage Sproutcore. The team at Strobe decided that Sproutcore didn't fit many Web 2.0 use cases well enough, and was too much of an all-or-nothing proposition for developers, so they initiated an effort toward Sproutcore 2. The goals of Sproutcore 2 were modularity, and a more HTML-aware approach that would be more accessible to web developers everywhere. Backbone's early traction was part of this analysis.
After struggling to move the Sproutcore codebase toward this vision, the Strobe team decided to start fresh with Sproutcore 2 (internal codename Amber). Charles wrote the core Run Loop and key-value observer code. Yehuda Katz and Tom Dale were the lead Strobe developers on the project. The vision at the time was that Strobe and the community would eventually port over most features and functionality from Sproutcore 1.x to Sproutcore 2.
Strobe business efforts were not yielding hoped-for results, and the company weighed its options, eventually deciding on a acquisition of Strobe talent by Facebook. Before this happened, a number of Strobe employees, including Katz and Dale, split off to form a new company called Tilde.
Tilde decided to continue to develop Sproutcore 2, but change the name (to Amber.js and then Ember.js) and goals of the project. They dropped long-term goals of backward compatibility with Sproutcore. They dropped support for any kind of view widget library and focused on the HTML/CSS use case with tight integration of data binding with the Handlebars templating language.
Since the dissolution of Strobe, stewardship of Sproutcore 1.x has passed from Jolley to Tyler Keating, and the community has re-focused on cleaning up Sproutcore 1.x, which was in an uncomfortable place for a while when the idea of Sproutcore 2 was looming.
What are the effective differences between the two efforts?
The similarities in the projects are that they feature very similar object models. They have similar property, observer and binding systems, too.
Sproutcore includes a library of view widgets like toolbars, list views, grid views, buttons, and theming system, and a focus on defining the view layer via Javascript and absolute positioning managed by the library. It is very powerful for creating desktop-style apps on the web.
Ember has a smaller footprint. It features tight integration with Handlebars. It is an alternative to Backbone for many projects. It aims to provide a standard application architecture for client-side apps and eliminate boilerplate code.
Those differences will likely lead to the frameworks diverging, although there has been some consideration of adopting the same core. In that scenario, Sproutcore would use Ember's "metal" library and perhaps other core libs).
What is Sproutcore's future, where is it going now?
This thread has minutes from the a recent contributor's meetup.
https://groups.google.com/group/sproutcore/browse_thread/thread/aacf00a6047a866e#
The short-term roadmap is to focus on solidifying the marketing materials, demos, and codebase. The team recently released the Sproutcore Showcase. There is general consensus about replacing abbot, the Ruby build tools for Sproutcore, with a Javascript(node.js)-based solution, which is now under active development. There is also a desire for fewer "large" merges of code from companies like Apple and more frequent releases. Sproutcore 1.8 was recently released.
Is Ember going develop to be a complete replacement for sproutcore?
Not likely. The Ember core team has been clear that they have no intention of personally developing those missing features. It is possible that community members may develop those as separate projects -- flame.js is the most ambitious attempt so far. Ember's design choices make it easier to integrate with projects like jQuery UI, so a full replacement may or may not be necessary.
1) The official line is Sproutcore is intended for RIAs and Ember.js is intended for "web-styled" applications. So when you look at iCloud think Sproutcore and when you look at Twitter think Ember.js.
From the technical standpoint, Ember.js is focused on more modularized code and so called "semantic-templates" for views. Sproutcore is more monolithic.
2) I'm not sure anyone really knows. If you look at the timeline, Charles Jolley left Apple to form a company called Strobe, which developed a full-stack platform for application development. Strobe hired Yehuda Katz and others, who began working on slimming down SC so it would run better on mobile devices. After about a year, Yehuda left to form the company Tilde, and a month after that Facebook bought Strobe in what is widely regarded as a talent acquisition.
So interpret that as you will.
3) This is an excellent question. Recently there was a meetup and several things were discussed. Key points discussed were:
SC is still alive and kicking
Improve documentation (we have been hearing that for a while).
Keep the good parts the code that was introduced post 1.4.5 in development of SC2 and get rid of or move to optional modules other stuff (like Templates)
new javascript-based build tools
completely new canvas based view layer, called Blossom.
Some sort of foundation/corporate backing for SC
There are probably others that I missed
4) Definitely not a replacement, although you can use any framework to build any app (it's all javascript, after all).
I am a somewhat experienced rubyist, but I am now starting to do rails development. I know rails is used to make "web applications" but what exactly does that mean? Do you build entire sites with rails or do you build a feature for a website in rails, and integrate it in to an existing website? (I know this question is kind of vague, but any answers to how ROR is used in the creation of websites would be much appreciated).
Generally speaking, you will build a full site with Rails, though you can integrate it into an existing website, as well. It is designed to provide a top-to-bottom solution for entire websites.
For standalone features or small scripts you just want to expose to the web, you might look at something like Sinatra or Camping.
What is Ruby on Rails?
I'm also build some rails applications in that I had entirely use rails to develop my web application. It's quite easy rather than using two or three languages. But when I developed I had to use Javascripts, CSS and Ajax to create more attractively
For me it's a great framework to build website and minimal knowledge is required although experience and knowledge of ruby gives you an upper hand.
I also feel that rails is good not only to build websites but to manage it.
Also the support community of rails is awesome and is complemented by guys like Ryan bates with their screen casts.
Also when we build a website using ror, we have the flexibility to concentrate on different features at different times or by different person.
This gets a great modular structure.
So you can design the basic functionality today and tell your colleague to get the views attractive using JS and friends without affecting your functionality.
Also the external support for rails (like gems and plug ins) is awesome and makes life heaven!
I would suggest that it's a great framework and the best feature is that it is a very easy to begin and learn but it always surprises you with new things.
Thus it allows you to learn a lot!
Hope it helps.
The website/web application distinction is made because there are many Rails apps in existence with no front end or 'website' to speak of. Using Rails, one could serve JSON amongst a cluster of compute nodes for data aggregation, or text to unix sockets for display on terminals. The uses for Rails are only limited by ones imagination, and you could even use Rails for single host interprocess communication if you desired. This might prove effective for a highly skilled rails programmer rather than learn a new tool to achieve similar results.
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This question is not about which is the best, it is about which makes the most business sense to use as a company's platform of choice for ongoing freelance development.
I'm currently trying to decide what framework to move my company in regarding frameworks for web application work.
Options are
ASP.NET MVC
Django
CakePHP/Symfony etc..
Struts
Pearl on Rails
Please feel free to add more to the discussion.
I currently work in ASP.NET MVC in my Spare time, and find it incredibly enjoyable to work with. It is my first experince with an MVC framework for the web, so I can't talk on the others.
The reason for not pushing this at the company is that I feel that there are not many developers in the Media/Marketing world who would work with this, so it may be hard to extend the team, or at least cost more.
I would like to move into learning and pushing Django, partly to learn python, partly to feel a bit cooler (all my geeky friends use Java/Python/c++). Microsoft is the dark side to most company's I work with (Marketing/Media focused). But again I'm worried about developers in this sector.
PHP seems like the natural choice, but I'm scared by the sheer amount of possible frameworks, and also that the quality of developer may be lower. I know there are great php developers out there, but how many of them know multiple frameworks? Are they similar enough that anyone decent at php can pick them up?
Just put struts in the list as an option, but personally I live with a Java developer, and considering my experience with c#, I'm just not that interested in learning Java (selfish personal geeky reasons)
Final option was a joke
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2007/11/perl_on_rails.shtml
As you said for the media/digital marketing sector php is the way to go.
I love .Net (it would be my first choice if the target market wasn't a factor).
I would really look for good well rounded developers regardless of their tech or market as opposed to ones with "media/digital marketing sector" experience.
It is possible to find good/experienced/reliable developers with knowledge of multiple frameworks. If this is a requirement, it is of course possible to vet candidates accordingly.
Given that you're referring to freelance development, it would probably make sense to add the dimension of "where the developer is based" into your thinking, as dealing with someone who's a stone throw's away compared to dealing with someone abroad or another city may affect how you work together. This means that where you are based also affects your choice: if you're based in a small town, there will be less quality canditates close to you with suitable skill sets.
I'm currently learning Symfony for myself, and work as a freelance advisor/product developer for a site that's built with CakePHP. Although an experienced PHP developer should be able to make the leap from one of the above to the other quite quickly, there's a fair amount of framework-specific intricacies that can only really be learnt by coming across the problem and then searching for the solution, or by being guided by someone who already knows. Symfony is considered to have good documentation, but I feel that there's a quite a lot in it that's also not in the documentation and that can really only be learnt by doing it.
I also worked for a company quite recently who used Symfony, hired high-quality PHP developers only, and if I recall correctly, it was about a month or two for new guys to get familiar with the code and the workings of Symfony, and start becoming properly productive.
Hope that helps.
In my (heavily biased) opinion, Django is gaining some traction in this sector. Off the top of my head I can think of a number of high-profile news organizations that are making significant use of Django and I've seen reports of organizations utilizing Django for putting up special one-off sites quickly for unique coverage of special events or circumstances. I know firsthand that PBS and National Geographic also use Django extensively for their web properties and I understand Discovey Channel does as well. There is a nice testimonial about how Michael Moore's site was rebuilt quickly using Django: http://blog.concentricsky.com/2009/10/michaelmoore/. I'm not sure if MSNBC has begun utilizing Django internally, but they did acquire Everyblock.
A few others I'm aware of that use Django heavily:
Mahalo
NASA
University of Texas
I've also seen that Django is being used by startups outside the media sector so I wouldn't say it is specialized toward a particular business sector. There are a lot of organizations out there that have been sort of silently using Python internally over the years and so Django is quickly becoming a natural option for web-based services. Python actually has decent roots in the scientific communities, financial sector, and I've spoken with a number of people in the entertainment industry who use Python in their digital effects / post production pipelines.
Maybe not the most riveting content overall, but there is some good info in here: http://djangocon.blip.tv/file/3041158
Look at your clients. Frameworks are just tools, you will have to go with the tool that suits the particular job. This also means your choice to dive into a framework will choose your future clients.
Many SMB shops need PHP because that it is the easiest to host and is interoperable on many layers of "platform" (not just OS, but also supports all DBs etc.)
ASP.NET MVC: I heard a lot of awesomeness about it, I like C# as well. But I can't afford to go only with the options Microsoft provides (database for example) and Microsoft products only really support they own stuff.
Django: Expected to gain huge momentum, but I'll wait until the language itself (syntax) becomes stable.
CakePHP/Symfony: CakePHP is very easy to pick up and is a good choice if it fits all the requirements.
Struts: Quite heavy, I would learn Spring (MVC) instead.
Pearl on Rails: Haven't really used/seen it, so no idea.
You could also consider to learn a framework that is radically different from you current knowledge.
So I love Symfony. It does all I need for a Framework to work fast and clean.
The structure and the architecture is pre-defined so everybody knows where to put stuff, so you can easily work together with a whole bunch of developers.
I would never chose CakePHP over Symfony, because if you have to make changes to a model, you can never again generate code after the development has started.
CakePHP just overwrites everything.
I sure lost all my code a few times. Really annoying.
Symfony just extends the generated code and that is where you develop.
Here you find a good discussion about CodeIgniter (with which I develop at the moment, and it is no MVC and PHP4-based) and Symfony: codeigniter-vs-symfony
The learning curve is a bit steeper for Symfony, but it has enough complexity for all situations I ever encountered.
My next project will again base on Symfony 1.4. And if you can wait, there will soon be Symfony 2.0
ASP.NET MVC, but only if you can use both a frontend and a backend developer for each project. It'll probably be harder to find developers with both competences and you might have to push .net-developers a bit to get them to use MVC.
I'm working on a application that requires a feature-rich media view, including images, videos, and smooth sequencing based on capture time. The backend is currently written in Rails.
What's currently the best, most mature option for implementing RIAs with Rails on the backend? I've looked at Flex, Laszlo, and ExtJS. ExtJS is interesting to me because I'm really not a fan of pure Flash UIs, but it seems highly targeted towards business apps, not entertainment applications like this.
Any suggestions or insights from others doing similar efforts will be very much appreciated.
Thanks!
I second zdmytriv for that book Flexible Rails, it's awesome. It's fairly outdated now though but lays out how simple it is to create a solid Project Management application with Flex and Rails. Everything in there has now become "RestfulX".
Check out RestfulX, it's a must. The RestfulX Google Group is very active too and they've made a lot easy.
We built this website in Flex with RestfulX and it was very easy. That application uses the Rails Paperclip gem to do image processing in a Flex admin panel like ScrapBlog (Scrapblog was built in Flex), and we could use some cool layout effects built into Flex 4. RestfulX made that pretty easy, and the gems made it even easier :p. They have generators too like Rails so it's real easy to get up and running with a DataGrid/CMS-like interface in 5 minutes.
I don't know anything about the other things you've mentioned, but I do know that it's pretty fun and easy to integrate Flex with Rails now-a-days.
As a side note, you can do hardcore SEO with Flex and Rails too, thanks to SWFAddress. We're doing that with that site above.
Cheers
I can recommend Flex and also this book Flexible Rails, whole book dedicated Flex with Rail cooperation. List of sample applications from the book here
Flexible Rails http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51QysfVDlVL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
If you're serious about considering Ext as an option, you should really search and maybe post in their forums about others using Rails, I know there are quite a few doing so successfully. I just ran across this example that seems like a pretty fully-baked app doing just that, so it's definitely possible.
Without knowing exactly what you're trying to do, I think that saying Ext is "targeted towards business apps" is a fair general statement, in terms of the widgets that come with it out of the box. It's highly geared toward window/form-based Ajax apps. That said, Ext Core is very similar to jQuery and other core frameworks, and everything in Ext is built to be highly extensible (hence, "ext"). In terms of being able to build what you need off of it, it is very powerful and flexible. You can certainly implement a flash viewer easily, and there are existing plugins that will do exactly that.
Sounds like Toby had a bad experience with Ext, but many other people enjoy it and find it very natural to code in. The syntax definitely has a Java/C# flavor to it in some ways (although it's really hard to directly compare any JS framework to a static language), and it has roots in YUI (which is even more verbose). For someone coming from C-ish backgrounds, it will likely feel very comfortable. If you're more used to Python or Ruby or something else, then it might not be as enjoyable, I don't know. Something you'd have to try for yourself.
Take a look at WebOrb from themidnightcoders.com. Among many features, it allows for AMF protocol for serialization of data. It is smoking fast.
IMO, if you want a true RIA experience, you'll need to focus on either Flex or Silverlight. There are pros and cons to each.
I did a GWT project a while back and am working with Ext right now. I have some C# / Swing GUI experience, none in Flash.
I like Ext a lot. It looks great, and I found the programming model close enough to the C#'s and Swings of the world as to be familiar and fairly pleasant. The documentation is not excellent, but definitely good enough. For Java at least, there is a solid remoting mechanism (third party, called DJN... most likely there are others, too). A couple of minor bugs here and there.
The major negative is support. They have a forum but there are a distressingly large number of questions and problems that go unresolved. They have paid support in theory, but were sufficiently unresponsive to basic 'how does your paid support work' type questions that I was not encouraged to buy any. There is only one book that I know of, it looks promising but it is not out yet.
I found GWT impressive and had no real problems, but at the end of of the day I am much happier with Ext.
Have you taken a look at Google Web Toolkit yet? In my opinion it's a great way to build rich and performant web applications. The toolkit is quite mature (Google Wave is build with it) and has a lot of good tools to make development easy.
Here's a previous Stakoverflow post.
I don't know about best, but I did a project using ExtJS and hated every minute of it. Frustratingly verbose code, overly complicated programming model, confusing documentation, and difficult to make it do anything it didn't want to.
That said, it looks very awesome, has incredibly powerful widgets and the client and users loved it.
I haven't helped at all, have I?
I think if you requirements include doing anything with video and audio, you are going to need a Flash solution.
Take a look at netzke -- client-server components with Sencha Ext JS and Ruby on Rails.
Netzke is a framework that allows for a beautiful blend of client- and
server-side code (JavaScript and Ruby, respectively) into ready-to-use
GUI components. It's most useful for creating complex data-rich
backend applications with Ruby on Rails on the back end, and Sencha
Ext JS in the browser.
I just saw that whitehouse.gov is using drupal as a CMS and portal technology.
One of the advantages of drupal seems that it is easy to add plugins and that programming is minimum, i.e. that re-inventing the wheel is at minimum. That is actually exactly the DRY philosophy of Ruby-on-Rails. So:
What are the drawbacks of drupal?
What would Rails or other Ruby based technologies disqualify as portal technology for whitehouse.org (or other CMS portals) ?
What are the drawbacks of drupal?
This is really a quite subjective question in relation to Ruby and Rails. Drupal is a solid content management option and really shines for community-oriented sites. It is useful for general purpose content management for non-portal sites as well. The drawbacks would be that it is built on PHP, if you are a Rubyist then that is a significant drawback. Additionally it is a beast of a project if you are looking at just the core. The API is quite large which is fitting for a project like Drupal, but this can make getting substantial customization done into a lot of coding work. Also, because of the whole architecture of Drupal there is no clear separation of data types unless you write a custom module that makes a clear separation and while this is in keeping with the "Drupal way" it is a little odd to some to think of EVERYTHING as a node or within the structure of Drupal's Taxonomy system or the like.
The biggest drawback to Drupal really can be best summed up this way: in order to make effective use of Drupal you really need to know and understand Drupal in a way that you don't for a CMS system like Radiant; but Radiant is nowhere near as complex as Drupal.
What would Rails or other Ruby based technologies disqualify as portal technology for
whitehouse.org (or other CMS portals) ?
Rails is rather dissimilar from Drupal in that it is not really a content management system at all but a more general purpose application framework. You can use Drupal in ways similar to Rails, but Drupal is really much more than what Rails is. Better comparisons could be made between Drupal and say Radiant or BrowserCMS or some of the other Ruby/Rails CMS packages. There are Ruby/Rails portal systems out there but few match the bulk of Drupal and it's community. The most comparable options in the Ruby ecosystem only match bits and pieces of what Drupal can do, but that is because Drupal is that massive a project and a community. Drupal is a swiss army knife plus some for doing sites on the web. Ruby doesn't have a truly similar project out there because most Rubyists don't see any reason to duplicate Drupal's girth.
I would recommend the following projects as things to look at if you are considering use Ruby in place of Drupal (most of these Ruby projects will cover less than Drupal but fit closer with your site's actual needs):
Radiant
BrowserCMS
Lovd by Less
Community Engine
Quite subjectively, I find the Drupal administration interface a bit clunky. You can try it out for yourself without actually installing Drupal at opensourcecms.com. That being said, there seem to be a great momentum in Drupal community at the moment, and it's starting to become a really full-featured CMS.
Comparing Rails to Drupal is somewhat like comparing apples to oranges. Rails is an application framework and Drupal is a CMS (although with a kind of application framework included).
allesklar, what is wrong with the extension system within Radiant? There are plenty of Rails CMS out there already. I suspect contributing to an established system to improve it would be more productive for the community at large than creating yet another niche CMS.
I'm a Rails developer so I'm all for Rails solutions but presently there is no Rails CMS that comes any close to a CMS such as Drupal in terms of functionality and plugins.
I attribute this partly to the 'less is more' philosophy advocated by 37signals.
Wordpress, Drupal, and others go for 'as many features as possible' and doing such end up attracting masses of users who will find that these products do answer their needs.
I've been playing with the idea of, like many others, starting a Rails based CMS system with plenty of features and a good plugin architecture. No time to work on this yet though between client work and development of an hosted application I'm working on.
I just found this site:
drupal and rails
If you are looking for portal technology built in Ruby, a relatively new candidate to consider would be EngineY. EngineY was originally built as a social networking framework but also has features that make it a viable candidate as a traditional portal. EngineY's concept of a 'widget' is similar to a traditional portal's portlet. There is a Managed Content widget included with EngineY that lets you create a portal made up of managed content. Best of all is that EngineY is very actively maintained and is evolving and improving daily.