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Google Releases Open Source JavaScript Tools
Dan Jones writes "Google has open sourced several of its key JavaScript application development tools, hoping that they will prove useful for external programmers to build faster Web applications. According to Google, by enabling and allowing developers to use the same tools that Google uses, they can not only build rich applications but also make the Web really fast. The Closure JavaScript compiler and library are used as the standard Javascript library for pretty much any large, public Web application that Google is serving today, including some of its most popular Web applications, including Gmail, Google Docs and Google Maps. Google has also released Closure Templates which are designed to automate the dynamic creation of HTML. The announcement comes a few months after Google released and open sourced the NX server."
Half the demos don't work and these widgets are hideous even by Google standards. I'm gonna stick with ExtJs for the forseeable future.
look a bit like a push towards Chrome.
Funny, I've also heard this argument the other way around. A lot of people seem to think that Chrome is actually meant simply to push every browser developer to build faster JavaScript support and to catalyze other technologies that will allow Google to develop better web applications. Maybe this release is also a push towards those goals.
Sometimes you've gotta roll the hard six.
Let's kill Silverlight and Flash with Javascript and JavaFX, the open languages.
Sad face here, I wonder just how open Java will remain. Consider: Java was defined by the Sun Java Test Suite, wasn't it? And now Oracle owns Sun. Oracle has long been known to me as a very agressive closed, proprietary company living off their software licenses.
Should the Open Source community still be backing Java, now that the rather benign hand of Sun is no longer controlling it? Is it time to rally around something else now? Some language where you aren't in danger of being sued for infringement if you copy a test suite?
I am worried about Oracle pulling the strings, at some point they may think it in their best interests to act in such a way as to drive the language to more proprietary platforms. It's within their scope to do so, and it may be in their best interests to try. What was once the language choice for clear sailing is now in treacherous waters I think. Write once, run everywhere - for a given value of "everywhere".
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
None of us would use Javascript if we had a choice, but we don't. So toolkits like JQuery or this release by Google are life savers.
JavaScript the language is actually very nice - the main problems with 'JavaScript' are browser inconsistencies, the DOM, etc. etc.
But if you take JavaScript itself, then yeah it has some problems - it was rushed - but it has good parts: It's a dynamic language, supports closures, first-class functions, convenient object definition syntax (from where we get JSON), etc. Due to its ubiquity, it also has the most secure and fast engines of any dynamic language (except for LuaJIT, but a comparison there is a topic all in itself).
Because of those, JavaScript is being used more and more as a scripting language outside of web browsers, for example in desktop environments, game engines, etc. If you stick to good coding practices in JavaScript, you can write large and robust applications in it.
But, again, to return to the original point, the current state of JavaScript in browsers is very messy. Which is why we need things like jQuery, and maybe this new library from Google as well.