I've been going thought a learning phase this year. There have been so many new (at least to me) tools and products that finding time to research them and deciding if should spend my precious time on using them is a challenge.
What I'm looking at now....
iBook Author. I'm currently (slowly) working on an eBook project and I'm using Pages as my writing tool because 1) I already have it and know it and 2) it can export directly to the ePub format.
Now Apple comes along and creates their TextBook format along with the iBook Author tool which uses their own extensions. The draw for me is the media inclusion in the book of dynamic content. The map images, photos and videos are simple and know content types. What caught my eye was the HTML content is in the form of DashCode apps / widgets. This had led me down a different trail of finding out more about DashCode as it's dual use for iBook 2 and Safari mobile apps. I always like it when I can double my use for knowledge I've gained. My first book project would be free so the license issues with iBook 2 would not prevent me from distributing the book to other ebook distributers. There may be a iOS customer that could benefit from a lightweight (quick / cheap) DashCode mobile app. This is on going study.
My other research area are for REST WebServices that are lightweight. I've used many implementations of these but I've seen a couple of articles on Node.js so I did a wee bit of research on this. My first contact with Node.js articles stated it was "the next Ruby On Rails", which really turned me off. When ROR first appeared on the radar ROR was really hyped up. So much so that it's claims almost extended to brining back the dead. It took a few years but the hype has been gone and ROR saw it's peak years ago with almost no press today. It could never live up to it's expectations and other shinny objects drew attention of early adopters. Back to Node.js.
Right now I do not feel that I'll continue my research on Node.js. It feels like a solution in search of a problem with it's main attraction being the use of JavaScript on both the client and the server. It's not that I'm against running JavaScript on the server, I'm not, but 1) JavaScript was not designed for the server in the first place and 2) Node.js touts it's own webServer for Node.js operation.
Just like ROR had it's own WebServer so does Node.js, and these should be used instead of Apache or JBoss that are scaleable, secure, mature and documented? Yeah, so we wrap the Node.js server under Apache, then we have increased the complexity a bit. Then there are no dev/debugging tools for this yet (yeah you can alway patch something together, but you get my point). ROR spent years trying to convince everyone that it could scale with every release being so much better. Now Node.js is claiming it can scale with it's lightweight processes. Most of the information does state that Node.js is best for a specific usage of short WS requests (and they do state this which is great), but please don't compare it to ROR and follow in it's mistakes.
Node.js will not make it past my research phase. It's tools are too immature (I'm not that early of an adopter) and I'll not sure that it will make it out of the early adopter usage.
I don't know if DashCode will gain wide adoption. The IDE for it has not been updated for a couple of years but it may find life in a different form (iBooks). As for Node.js, I'll wait and see. ROR rocketed so high and burned out, not unlike a number of technologies in the past (Wicket, AOP anyone?), so may Node.js. The lifecycle of technology is not unlike those of introduced species, some fill a niche and some don't make it.
It's life, just in a different form.
What I'm looking at now....
iBook Author. I'm currently (slowly) working on an eBook project and I'm using Pages as my writing tool because 1) I already have it and know it and 2) it can export directly to the ePub format.
Now Apple comes along and creates their TextBook format along with the iBook Author tool which uses their own extensions. The draw for me is the media inclusion in the book of dynamic content. The map images, photos and videos are simple and know content types. What caught my eye was the HTML content is in the form of DashCode apps / widgets. This had led me down a different trail of finding out more about DashCode as it's dual use for iBook 2 and Safari mobile apps. I always like it when I can double my use for knowledge I've gained. My first book project would be free so the license issues with iBook 2 would not prevent me from distributing the book to other ebook distributers. There may be a iOS customer that could benefit from a lightweight (quick / cheap) DashCode mobile app. This is on going study.
My other research area are for REST WebServices that are lightweight. I've used many implementations of these but I've seen a couple of articles on Node.js so I did a wee bit of research on this. My first contact with Node.js articles stated it was "the next Ruby On Rails", which really turned me off. When ROR first appeared on the radar ROR was really hyped up. So much so that it's claims almost extended to brining back the dead. It took a few years but the hype has been gone and ROR saw it's peak years ago with almost no press today. It could never live up to it's expectations and other shinny objects drew attention of early adopters. Back to Node.js.
Right now I do not feel that I'll continue my research on Node.js. It feels like a solution in search of a problem with it's main attraction being the use of JavaScript on both the client and the server. It's not that I'm against running JavaScript on the server, I'm not, but 1) JavaScript was not designed for the server in the first place and 2) Node.js touts it's own webServer for Node.js operation.
Just like ROR had it's own WebServer so does Node.js, and these should be used instead of Apache or JBoss that are scaleable, secure, mature and documented? Yeah, so we wrap the Node.js server under Apache, then we have increased the complexity a bit. Then there are no dev/debugging tools for this yet (yeah you can alway patch something together, but you get my point). ROR spent years trying to convince everyone that it could scale with every release being so much better. Now Node.js is claiming it can scale with it's lightweight processes. Most of the information does state that Node.js is best for a specific usage of short WS requests (and they do state this which is great), but please don't compare it to ROR and follow in it's mistakes.
Node.js will not make it past my research phase. It's tools are too immature (I'm not that early of an adopter) and I'll not sure that it will make it out of the early adopter usage.
I don't know if DashCode will gain wide adoption. The IDE for it has not been updated for a couple of years but it may find life in a different form (iBooks). As for Node.js, I'll wait and see. ROR rocketed so high and burned out, not unlike a number of technologies in the past (Wicket, AOP anyone?), so may Node.js. The lifecycle of technology is not unlike those of introduced species, some fill a niche and some don't make it.
It's life, just in a different form.
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