Ruby On Rails Goes 1.1

MrByte420 writes "The Ruby On Rails team today released version 1.1 of the web framework. From the announcement: 'Rails 1.1 boasts more than 500 fixes, tweaks, and features from more than 100 contributors. Most of the updates just make everyday life a little smoother, a little rounder, and a little more joyful.' New features were examined back in February at Scottraymond.net and include Javascript/AJAX integration, enhancements to active record, and enhanced testing suites. Not to mention upgrading this time promises to be a piece of cake."

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Why I Don't Use The prototype.js JavaScript Lib.

[SimHacker]

Here's an article from James Mc Parlane's Blog that describes the horrible problem with prototype.js and its ilk that define methods in Object.prototype and Array.prototype.

-Don

James Mc Parlane's Blog

Why I Don't Use The prototype.js JavaScript Library

When it comes to JavaScript there is one issue for which there seems to be two polarised camps, and that is the question of extending the inbuilt JavaScript Array and Object types via the prototype object. There are those who do, and those who don't.

I am most definitely one of those in the "Don't, because it 'would be bad'" camp.

Now, thanks to the Web2.0/Ruby On Rails/Nuevo Bubble phenomena there is a widely used library that makes great use of the prototype object and that is Sam Stephenson's prototype.js library.

I ran into an issue 6 months ago and decided I would never ever use prototype.js, despite the fact, and I don't say this often, that after an examination of the code, prototype.js is an inspired work of art.

What I and many many others have discovered is that using the prototype object on the Array and Object inbuilt types increases the chances that your code will conflict with existing or external code. It makes your code not play well with others, so once you start using prototype.js, you have to keep using prototype's paradigm because by extending Array and Object via the prototype object it secretly modifies some of JavaScripts default behavior.

It's the crack cocaine of JavaScript.

This can be a good thing. If you don't want to waste time writing your own JavaScript libraries and learning how everything really works, then using prototype.js and the libraries that extend it (e.g. Open Rico) is a very good way of developing. You will save time and money and all you need to learn is "the way of prototype.js".

Now the entire tasty raisin for the MetaWrap JavaScript libraries is to allow others to easily remix MetaWrap applications via a client side API that can be invoked via XML. The result is that CSS, HTML and JavaScript can be injected into the application, or XML and HTML at any point in the rendering pipeline of the application.

So I simply had to reject prototype.js because, out of the box, the very first time I tried to use it - it snuck out and cut the throat of the JavaScript I was using that relied on performing a for(x in object) on the contents of an Array.

In JavaScript, value types are subdivided into primitives and objects. Objects are entities that have an identity (they are only equal to themselves) and that map primitive properties to other value types, ("slots" in prototype-based programming terminology) - see these testcase #5 - #7. Because of this behavior JavaScript objects are often mistakenly described as associative arrays or hash tables, while functionally they behave like an associative array/hash table, technically this is not their true nature.

Despite this the JavaScript programming world has come to rely on these objects behaving as predictable associative array/hash tables - and prototype.js breaks this.

There is no object more galactically useful than a good associative array/hashtable. There is no problem that can't be solved with a large enough hash table. In highly granular interpreted languages like JavaScript it provides a way to dip into pure native brute force computing power mostly unhindered by the language interpreter.