Cappuccino 0.7 Released | Hacker News Reader

Cappuccino 0.7 Released

cappuccino.org

71 pointsboucher35 comments

280North looks awesome: hacking on some cool stuff, enjoying life. If you don't mind me asking, how do you survive?

Most YC startups are desperately pimping their little web sites on every techcrunch they can find, consuming every open sourced library there is, without contributing much back, while you're sailing along like open source gods, immortal, living off the sunlight.

I know about 280Slides, but it seems you're mostly about Atlas and Cappuccino, so which one is your monetizable product? Or did I nail it with immortality? :)

Atlas, as far as I know, won't be open source. So Atlas would be their monetizable product. 280Slides could be monetized in the future which is also not an open source project.

We're not immortal, but I'm glad you think so. We strongly believe in open source software, and we want to be a part of it. Cappuccino is our way of doing that. Plus, with something this cool, we just couldn't keep it to ourselves :)

But, for the record, Atlas will be a commercial product. We are not yet ready to release details though.

As a longtime Cocoa developer, I'm thrilled to be able to use Cappuccino. The .7 release is a great leap forward, particularly the new theming capability. I've literally dreamed of the day that I could deliver a true desktop quality experience in a web app: Cappuccino will let me get there.

We'll be putting up some tutorials on how to use nib2cib and all the new technologies in the coming weeks

The Aristo PSDs should be a treat for folks like me with no real Photoshop training but with the ambition to make things that don't look ugly.

does anyone have experience with something like this (or SproutCore, GWT) versus a heavier javascript solutions that uses the backend purely to get data? i'm thinking extjs on the frontend with an api on the backend (probably django for the admin). any feedback? ps: i expect to write js most of the time as opposed to (in this case) python. extjs is rich enough that i don't have to muck with html/css either and i can throw google gears for good measure.

sorry, too long.

appreciate any comments.

I was under the impression that this was more like ExtJS (i.e. the heavier end of the scale) rather than something like jQuery that pretty much just works on top of standard HTML markup.

I spent several months attempting to hack our applications to work within the ExtJS way, but found it pretty hostile to working with a traditional web application (e.g. POST/GET rather than AJAX everything). This bad experience led me to dismiss Cappuccino as being inappropriate for our needs, though it might be useful for writing apps from scratch. jQuery has proven far more amenable to a baby-steps conversion from a traditional CGI app to an AJAX application. There's also the accessibility and downgrade path question with all-JavaScript generated pages (like ExtJS, and, I thought, Cappuccino).

But perhaps I'm mistaken about Cappuccino.

very informative. thanks.

i think in cappuccino you do everything in the "backend". there's no need to write javascript/html/css ... which is good in a lot of ways (you can output source for different devices, and i'm even guessing you could generate different backends - php, .NET) - but i'm more interested in the js/AJAX everything model, lighter on the backend.

i've never worked in objectiveC/J but js seems nicer at first glance. but i may just be saying that so that i don't feel like i would miss something should we choose etxjs.

more feedback would be appreciated guys.

Actually it's the opposite, Cappuccino applications are mostly client-side, running on JavaScript. Objective-J is an extension to JavaScript, which gets compiled to JavaScript (either at runtime or ahead of time).

yes. but how is that generated js being served?

However you want. Nginx or Apache. It doesn't need a special server. Any interaction to the site/db/etc still goes through ruby or php or whatnot.

Any HTTP server. The runtime compilation takes place in the browser (the compiler is written in JavaScript). The pre-compilation uses a command line version of the compiler running in Rhino)

thanks. i think i'm sticking to js then.

ok. ok. i misunderstood. interesting. so why wouldn't i just write javascript? what is the value added? aside from the fact that i'm not coding in javascript (which i don't consider a negative)

JavaScript lacks several features useful in programming complex applications, namely classical inheritance, code importing, dynamic message dispatching. Objective-J adds these to JavaScript, but of course you still get all the features of JavaScript, since it's a superset of the language.

surely all these things and more can be accomplished with straight javascript. look at jquery! and extjs, prototype, ...

jquery has gone so far that it is starting to smell like a DSL. all in js.

thanks for the feedback.

yes. but how is that generated js being served?

Cappuccino is a completely client side framework. It requires nothing on the server. It is written in JavaScript and Objective-J (a small set of extensions to JavaScript). It uses no python.

Is this [really] the solution for building cross-compliant applications for web-browsers?

   When you program in Cappuccino, you don't need to concern yourself
   with the complexities of traditional web technologies like HTML, CSS, or even
   the DOM. The unpleasantries of building complex cross browser applications are
   abstracted away for you.

[http://cappuccino.org/learn/documentation/]

It definitely is one of the better solutions out there. For most parts it does work across browsers without any major issues. The only problem i have seen so far with cappuccino is that sometimes with slower browsers like IE the application seems less responsive.

what do you think about something like extjs?

extjs is a library and Objective-J is a new language. It is different in many respects. extjs might be good library to have with existing frameworks but if you are building something really complex UI on the web you are better off with Cappuccino.

Yeaaaah! Cappuccino Rocks Da House!!! :-)

It's weird how a harmless and well-meaning response gets so many downvotes for not being all serious and business-like.

It doesn't need to be serious and business-like, but it does need to contribute to the discussion. The likes of leet speak, fanboi terms, and first post claims do none of that, and in fact are harmful (no matter how well-meaning) because they contribute to the noise rather than the signal.

There are plenty of posts on HN that directly "contribute to the discussion," but still get voted down. I think it's more accurate to say a post is down or upvoted on the basis of whether or not the post contributes to the discussion the voters want to read.

Yes, at a minimum it needs to contribute to the discussion. If it doesn't do that, it should get voted down. There are other factors at play that will make people vote something down also; there was a topic/entry here with some interesting suggestions about multi-dimensional ratings (that I can't seem to find the page for it now).

It doesn't need to be serious and business-like, but it does need to contribute to the discussion.

Well, without being serious it's really difficult to pull off contributing to a discussion, especially in a way that would be deemed acceptable by you, for example.

My point was that the post up there did not contain leet speak, fanboi terms or first post claims, and did not really deserve eight downvotes worth of punishment only for not contributing.

You could say its contribution was to cheer Cappuccino on.

I apologize for being unable to completely enumerate all the possibilities of inane comments. That being said "Yeaaaah! Cappuccino Rocks Da House!!! :-)" is closer to "leet speak, fanboi terms, and first post claims" in general than it is to contributing to the discussion.

Why is being told that your post is not contributing considered "punishment"? There's only a single axis for people to express their vote on, and thus that's the only effective way to communicate that someone thinks something isn't contributing. Downvoting is not a personal attack (shouldn't be used as such and shouldn't be interpreted as such), but the belief is that it sufficiently sends a message that such content isn't wanted, for whatever reason (the fact that no reason is supplied is a deficiency in the system itself, having only one axis, not in the use of down votes).

I apologize for being unable to completely enumerate all the possibilities of inane comments.

Are we approaching Reddity levels of snarkiness already?

You're right in that there's no need to enumerate all possible offenses, but still, I think the comment was not harmful enough to warrant such a strong negative response.

Inane comments aside, are you sure we're not taking things too seriously?

Is it really absolutely certain that by not sending a strong message, "condemning" any comments that are not dressed up in fancy words and complicated sentences, Hacker News would just totally fall apart?

I can say not much at all in a complicated sentence, and still get no downvotes for not contributing to a conversation.

Is there really no middle ground worth exploring, between the circle-jerk of witticisms with a few insightful and informative comments sprinkled in between that is Reddit, and the rigid, enforced seriousness of HN?

If you post something along the lines of "first!" or general fanboism, you're more than likely going to get a number of downvotes. That's how it's always been here, and that's the whole point of the entire fucking karma system. It's intended to instigate, hopefully, meaningful discussions, or at least something that reflects a thoughtful presence.

> If you post something along the lines of "first!" or general fanboism, you're more than likely going to get a number of downvotes.

>> Inane comments aside, are you sure we're not taking things too seriously?

Also notice that the account was created at the same time as the comment (1 hour ago) and this is his only comment.

I truly hope the irony of this situation doesn't escape anyone here. The fact that this entire post is now dominated by a discussion of what makes a good comment (and thus being equally harmful to this post as a single "useless" comment itself) should point to a perhaps failed strategy.

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