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Google Is Building a Chrome App-Based IDE
An anonymous reader writes "Google's Chromium team never ceases to amaze. Its latest project is a Chrome app-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) codenamed Spark. For those who don't know, Chrome packaged apps are written in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, but launch outside the browser, work offline by default, and access certain APIs not available to Web apps. In other words, they're Google's way of pushing the limits of the Web as a platform."
First we tried to replace desktop apps with webapps and that's why we stood the awkwardness and immaturity of JavaScript, CSS and HTML. At least, we could justify it by saying "you'll be able to access the application from everywhere" (not true: new versions of browsers broke apps everytime)
Now, we are using those same immature and awkward technologies (JS, CSS, HTML) to develop local apps, which could be developed in C#, C++ or even Delphi in a fraction of time, integrate better with the platform and have more direct access to local APIs. I'm sorry but I don't understand this.
And yes, JavaScript, CSS, etc are way immature if you compare with what you can do in C# (WinForms, WPF), C++ (Qt, Boost) or even Delphi. The debugging process in itself is a nightmare.
"They already have a desktop web OS [Chomebook], which competes with Windows and Apple laptops"
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I guess Chromebooks are selling well --- but I haven't seen one in a store (I avoid "un-Best Buy") --- or one in real life.
Yet
I'll have to keep an eye out
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
What's all the excitement? The General Interface Builder is basically full-blown bsd licensed browser-based offline IDE of Eclipse proportions. It's quite amazing, certainly speeds up development of non-trivial GeneralInterface Ajax Applications quite a bit and is very well matured.
I'm not holding my breath for Google to catch up on GI anytime soon.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Basically everyone recognizes Eclipse is a load of crap.
Some would say this is because it's a poorly designed mismatch of "integrated modules" written by developers who had half of a good idea, implemented half of it, and then gave up, leaving the rest of us to put up with things like autocompletion systems that physically get in the way, bizarre default file associations, and "features" like network access that are rendered virtually unusable by being buried by several layers of confusing "user friendly" GUIs.
Others, such as Google, however, believe the problem with Eclipse is that it's written in Java. If only it were written in something logical like CSS, maybe coupled with something readable like HTML, perhaps held together with something stable and feature complete like Javascript, which can control the other elements using something intelligently designed, standardized, and completely quirkless like the Document Object Model, you'd have an IDE that would truly shine.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Do you remember those words. That was how Microsoft set the web back 20 years by killing standards compliance. Now google is the evil.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
So, basically Google is taking it on itself to do for Chrome what ActiveState did for Mozilla years ago -- which led to the excellent and constantly improving Komodo IDE (build on the Mozilla framework)?
Yet now we need both heads of a family to work, to pay more taxes than ever, to get fewer services as we hire more and more "competent" (they went to university!) people to manage, decide, do, undo, think, manage some more, do, undo and "produce" patterns of electrical charge on slivers on silicon that we all agreed "mean" something.
And all these people expect to be paid and they all think they're important. So we invent more and more absurd types of work. There's very little that needs doing, the rest is all theater.