While evaluating Adobe’s Integrated Runtime(AIR - formerly code-named Apollo), I was led to Aptana the self-proclaimed “Web IDE” that supports AIR via plugin. As a long-time Smalltalker, I started out with very mixed feelings about living inside a static box within another static box but after some simple coding and looking at screencasts I have to say that the integration of JavaScript, HTML, CSS and Ruby is compelling. The unified debugger makes it easy to be tolerant of the lurking, clunky Javaness. I’m close to convincing myself that if I close my eyes for a moment and imagine that the OS has disappeared and Java has taken it’s place, everything will work out just fine. AIR enables me to create web-aware, cross-platform, AJAXed, SQLite-aware, double-clickable applications and since Aptana is Eclipse-based, I can rhythmeer with IBM Jazz! Although it’s taken a long road with many unexpected turns, perhaps Java is going to become a ubiquitous platform - at least for development.
{ 2007 06 16 }
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dshafer | 16-Jun-07 at 12:20 pm | Permalink
Laurence,
So where do you feel the lurking, clunky Javaness (which seems to me repetitively redundant) in this mix? And where does Ruby come into play in these apps?
JavaScript (with XML or JSON data representation), HTML, CSS, AIR and SQLite seem to me to just about put the package together without much supporting cast, no? Or am I missing something.
lr | 16-Jun-07 at 2:14 pm | Permalink
While Aptana is more focused than Eclipse, it still is a big Java app consuming 754M of virtual memory according to Activity Monitor. I suppose if I had another gig it would feel snappier but now it takes a bit to load and some response times border on annoying. I probably should have said Ruby on Rails - I haven’t actually done anything with it yet, but having a single environment in which you can edit/manage both client AND server elements of a solution seems way cool - very much in the spirit of Smalltalk.