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Famo.us: Do We Really Need Another JavaScript Framework?
An anonymous reader writes Front-end developer Jaroen Janssen has a post about Famo.us, "a custom built JavaScript 3D rendering and physics engine meant as a replacement for the standard layout engine of the browser." The engine effectively replaces a big chunk of HTML5 in order to render more efficiently by using technology based on WebGL. Janssen questions whether the world really needs another JavaScript framework: "Is it a bad thing that Famo.us replaces major parts of HTML5? To be honest, I'm not sure. As a Front-end developer I have to admit it makes me slightly uneasy to have to use a custom API instead of 'standard' HTML5. On the other hand, like almost everyone that makes web apps for a living, I have been terribly frustrated by some of HTML5 limitations, like slowness and browser incompatibilities. Either way, it might be a good thing to try a fundamentally different approach so I'm keeping an open mind for now.
Famo.us chases another holy grail, namely the 'write once, run anywhere' dream. Instead of having to write different code for different platforms, like iOS and Android, developers can write one application that works and looks as good on all platforms, in theory anyway. This of course saves a huge amount of time and resources. Unfortunately, this idea is not without its problems and has never really worked very well with earlier attempts like Java-applets, Flash and Silverlight. In the end native applications have so far always been faster and slicker and I'm pretty skeptical Famo.us will be able to change this."
Famo.us chases another holy grail, namely the 'write once, run anywhere' dream. Instead of having to write different code for different platforms, like iOS and Android, developers can write one application that works and looks as good on all platforms, in theory anyway. This of course saves a huge amount of time and resources. Unfortunately, this idea is not without its problems and has never really worked very well with earlier attempts like Java-applets, Flash and Silverlight. In the end native applications have so far always been faster and slicker and I'm pretty skeptical Famo.us will be able to change this."
The web developers and users will quickly decide if people want this technology. The more options the better I say; the inferior ones will fade on their own.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
A lot of the goals of famo.us seem to overlap with another technology. Fla.sh!
Ducks, but it's true.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
It's not what we need. We've always had what we need.
It's about getting everyone to use the same thing.
Basically we have debates on screen layout, networking... other APIs. We've been building such APIs for decades.
It is just hard to get everyone to use the same API.
We need HTML+javascript, because for whatever reason that worked to get the world moving. Maybe it would have better if the web just ran off perl scripts or python scripts or QT application or TCL or whatever, but it didn't.
It began as a markup language (more to display documents like Word). Then it moved to become dynamic pages. Again like adding VBScripting to Word. Now we keep hacking and putting stuff on top of it to make it a full fledged programming environment.
We can hope for niceness, but this seems to be repeated over and over and our field. Yet, somehow, things get made.
You aren't right in a technical sense on this at all. It scary what Javascript and WebGL can do and the speed of it, but what is really scary is what a mess Javascript is in 2014 --- makes Perl look like BASIC. No need to obfuscate Javascript in 2014. Also I'm not sure if technologies like NaCL and WebGL should be in the future --- I guess, but it will be coming.
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But more to the question, what kind of web is this leading to
I used Adblock and Flashblock right now just to have a half-way decent experience on the internet to avoid a ghastly internet flash ads from downloading untold GBs of data/video/audio to annoy me without a way to mute it.
The internet is a train to nowhere and no one is driving it, big corporations will turn it into a minefield of advertising (which is FINE, by the way) but rip apart everything good (involuntary flash ads, bandwidth, speed, shitty cross-domain javascript, DRM, turn web standards into circuses) to get there.
Steve Jobs back 3 years did a rant again Flash, which at the time and still now embodies the villanous nature of plug-ins.
And with WebGL and video streaming and DRM in HTML5 --- your internet may get turned into a turdball --- just to waste everyone's bandwidth to show ads you will never click.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory