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Ajax: programmers vs developers?

There's an interesting thread on Tim O'Reilly's blog today that can basically be summarized as, "Are there two perspectives on Ajax?"
The basic fault line is between web developers who are comfortable monkeying around with web pages, and programmers who have spent years trying to abstract that stuff away.
Apart from my distaste for the acronym, and how it's become the new "Just stick web on it, or an 'i', or 'active' and it will be cool", it is a useful technology. In some situations. JavaScript debugging is the suxx0rs, even with Firefox. It is interesting to see the comparison of various "Ajax" libraries and how they go about it. Many are nothing more than new widget libraries, while others (esp. Prototype) give you the keys and say, "Go for it."
Print | posted on Tuesday, May 09, 2006 10:58 PM

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# re: Ajax: programmers vs developers?

left by craiger at 5/17/2006 1:07 AM Gravatar
Not sure if you've looked at JSF at all (probably not being it's Java) but the Sun people have created a set of JSF taglibs which do all the nasty javascript wiring for you. You simply use the tag like you would any other tag and it handles the rest.

Even better, the Java Studio Creator IDE team have created a component library around these Ajax tags so you can simply drag/drop them on the designer.

http://weblogs.java.net/blog/edburns/archive/2006/04/new_release_of.html

I agree JS debugging is tedious, and I've never actually used the Firefox one, only the Windows Script Debugger. Which, if the stars are aligned, might actually be invoked properly and not crash on you.

# re: Ajax: programmers vs developers?

left by acmeadmin at 5/18/2006 9:25 AM Gravatar
That's pretty much on the "programmer" side of the camp, and comparable to "Atlas". Take a look at Prototype or Script.aculo.us to see "the other side".

# re: Ajax: programmers vs developers?

left by craiger at 5/19/2006 7:44 PM Gravatar
Is it just for the programmers?

http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=40481

# re: Ajax: programmers vs developers?

left by kent at 5/20/2006 2:28 AM Gravatar
Well, based on the (IMO poorly named) division of developers and programmers in tfa, yeah, I'd say so.

# re: Ajax: programmers vs developers?

left by craiger at 5/20/2006 10:13 PM Gravatar
What's tfa?

# re: Ajax: programmers vs developers?

left by kent at 5/21/2006 12:17 AM Gravatar
Sorry. tfa == "The fine article"
That thread that I linked to on Tim O'Reilly's blog.
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