Move Over AJAX, Make Room for ARAX

sasserstyl writes "eWeek reports that Microsoft's Silverlight platform will support Ruby client-side scripting, enabling ARAX — or Asynchronous Ruby and XML. Would be cool to have the option to script client-side in something other than Javascript. 'In essence, using ARAX, Ruby developers would not have to go through the machinations of using something like the RJS (Ruby JavaScript) utility, where they write Ruby code and RJS generates JavaScript code to run on the client, Lam said. "Sure, you could do it that way, but then at some point you might have to add some JavaScript code that adds some custom functionality on the client yourself," he said. "So there's always that sense of, 'Now I'm in another world. And wouldn't it be nice if I have this utility class I wrote in Ruby...' Today if I want to use it in the browser I have to port it to JavaScript. Now I can just run it in the browser."'"

Comments

Um, my browser doesn't support Ruby

[Anonymous Coward]

Does yours?

Re:Um, my browser doesn't support Ruby

[stoolpigeon]

Not only that - my platform doesn't support silverlight.

Re:Um, my browser doesn't support Ruby

[catmistake]

Agreed.
Ajax (Asynchronous Javascript and XMLhttpRequest) was given a name because it was a growing trend; many decided to use it independently, and naming it something made sense. ARAX, or whatever, is just an idea a few people have. I see no trend.

Re:Um, my browser doesn't support Ruby

[happyemoticon]

It's more similar to Python in my mind. It's a post-Perl interpreted language that attempts to have better object-orientation while not being overly restrictive. It inherits a lot more from Perl than Python does, so you can accomplish most tasks in a variety of ways. Neither is anywhere near as rigid as Java - you don't have to catch or throw every exception, you don't have to make ten subclasses and an interface to write Hello World, etc.

I get into these kinds of discussions with my boss all the time. He looks at Java as the ultimate golden hammer, and I tend to use a variety of languages. There are a bunch of little syntactic things I love about Ruby, but in the end it's mostly a question of style, politics and library support.

Re:Um, my browser doesn't support Ruby

[an.echte.trilingue]

Microsoft knows that web applications will soon threaten their client-side sales model. They also know that places like Google have enough of a head start in the AJAX world that they will never catch up (tried google apps lately? It is really getting there, especially if you do a lot of collaborative work). This is why IE's javascript standards compliancy still sucks balls even though its CSS support isn't bad: they want to make life hard for people trying to develop in AJAX.

Now they are trying to develop proprietary technologies to compete: Silverlight and this new ARAX bull will replace Flash and AJAX. They will release some shit-hot developer tools that make it really easy to build shiny websites on the Silverlight/ARAX stack so that before long half the web is written in it. Then, ARAX and Silverlight will get proprietary extensions (new functionality! woot!) and break on non-IE browsers (got to assure that OS monopoly). They will also add some undocumented APIs so that the (subscription-based) Microsoft Apps runs faster than anything anybody else comes ups with, and boom!

Profit.

Re:Um, my browser doesn't support Ruby

[nuzak]

MVC in web apps has about as much to do with Smalltalk's old MVC as unix signals have to do with the physical control lines they used to correspond to (gimme a break I couldn't find a car analogy). MVC is nothing more than three-tier, with the middle tier itself adding some extra separation between processing requests (controller) and generating output (view).

HTTP is stateless. So is UDP. Does that make every online game that uses it stateless? The web is not a protocol.

Re:This time

[drinkypoo]

Everybody thinks that javascript just doesn't cut it for current Web Apps, and it was never meant to work like we make it work today.

Are you a troll (perhaps even a shill) or just a schmuck? There's nothing seriously wrong with Javascript as a language, only with specific implementations, some of which are actually quite good these days.

I'm guessing you are just a troll, but I don't want anyone to think you're right or anything and I have a little time on my hands :P

Re:This time

[asc99c]

Probably shouldn't feed the troll, but ...

His argument was against your assertion that 'everybody thinks javascript just doesn't cut it for current web apps'.

This plainly isn't true as lots of people are actually very impressed by the javascript language, and just a bit frustrated that IE6 / IE7 / IE on Safari work so differently to everything else. For internal work I just ignore IE, and target Firefox only.

Even Joel has praise for javascript - take a look at his 'Can Your Programming Language Do This?' article at
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/01.html

A better option than Javascript would be great, but Ruby hardly looks like the best option. A much better use of time for Microsoft would be making their Javscript engine for IE more standards compliant.

Re:look more closely at TFA...

[recoiledsnake]

What's so insecure about the MSIL(by which I presume you mean .NET) compared to any other environment(Java, Rails, PHP, etc)? I am really curious to know. I know this is Slashdot but please try not to reply with 'Everyone knows it is'.