Steve Yegge's Rhino on Rails

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pnewhook

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Nov 28, 2009, 11:30:41 PM11/28/09
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I feel like this group would know, did anything ever come of Steve
Yegge's rails port, Rhino on Rails? http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html

I just realized that in this interview he says it should be out in the
summer. That was January, 2008. Almost 2 years ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QD9XQm_Jd4&feature=PlayList&p=4AE5C0D23C2EB82D&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=2

Kevin Dangoor

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Nov 29, 2009, 9:21:33 PM11/29/09
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I haven't seen anything about this in a long time. FWIW, I think it's becoming increasingly irrelevant, anyhow. What's going on with JSGI is far more interesting, IMHO.

Kevin

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Kevin Dangoor

work: http://labs.mozilla.com/
email: k...@blazingthings.com
blog: http://www.BlueSkyOnMars.com

Nathan Stott

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Nov 30, 2009, 8:36:34 AM11/30/09
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I was extremely interested in Rhino on Rails as well.  However, nothing has come of it since that link you referenced that I know of.


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Mike Wilson

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Nov 30, 2009, 10:22:09 AM11/30/09
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At the end of this presentation transcript
he says that RnR was "a transitional thing"...
 
Best regards
Mike Wilson

chris thatcher

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Nov 30, 2009, 10:28:11 AM11/30/09
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I remember being a bit bummed when I was pointed to the article because I had been working on a similar idea.  I told myself at the time that I should just keep working because you never know what will come out in the wash, and I was enjoying the work.  I think a lot of people had great expectations but there has been a lot of server-side javascript frameworks that have still bothered trying to be relavant despite the idea that Yegge's rails port (line for line if I recall) was supposed to be the bee's knee.

Here are a few I know about:
HelmaNG is the Helma frameworks Next Generation.
Junction is a framework that describes itself as being a Rails Port.
ActiveJS is Jaxers stab at a Rails port.
jQuery.Claypool is my project that combines my favorite Django, Rails, and Spring patterns for client and server.

I'm happy there is no yegge javascript rails port yet, I think the community is better off trying to learn from rails and create it's own railable framework that is more appropriate for javascript than aping another framework just because it's popular for ruby.

If I had to guess, and that's all this next comment is, conjecture.  I think that google won't let yegge do it because they have done their best to minimize ruby demand on their cloud platform, and porting rails to javascript would somehow validate rails relavancy.  They choose to support python via django, and java because they have a big investment in those languages via their own developers.  I could be totally wrong though, maybe yegge just got busy or became uninterested.

Thatcher
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Christopher Thatcher

nlloyds

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Nov 30, 2009, 1:32:35 PM11/30/09
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On Nov 30, 9:28 am, chris thatcher <thatcher.christop...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> ActiveJS is Jaxers stab at a Rails port.

The ActiveJS project was started by Aptana, but they no longer have
any resources dedicated to it that I know of. It was originally
created for use on Jaxer, but is not tied to that platform. Tom
Robinson has a fork that works on Narwhal/Jack (http://github.com/
syntacticx/livepipe-ui/issues), which could be a good starting point
for future progress of the project.

It has active record, routes, controllers, and views, so with some
work one could make a railsish framework out of it. I have write
access to the the project (http://github.com/aptana/activejs), so if
anyone has patches I can pull them in. Don't have much time myself to
work on it though.

Nathan

pnewhook

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Nov 30, 2009, 2:29:45 PM11/30/09
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@Kevin
I tend to agree that there's been a tonne of Server side JavaScript
development since Yegge started RnR. But that said, it's still be a
very nice option. And a great source to learn from.

@Mike
He said it was a "transitional thing" but with the caveat "Google
would let me use Ruby". In the video he made it clear that even though
JRuby is on the JVM, bottom line is it's still Ruby and therefore out
of bounds at google.

@Chris
Sure, the community can learn a lot by building a very javascrpt
centric framework. But I don't think there's inherintly wrong with
porrting Rails. People that like it and have used it in another
language will be able to pick it up really quick and get going. Plus
it certainly doesn't preclude other frameworks from being developed.
That said, your other frameworks are interesting:
Helma NG: I've been following it closely and it's very interesting,
but not yet ready (data access, security, internationalization, pretty
much every thing else that CommonJS hasn't agreed on)
Junction: I saw this a little while ago and I can't explain why, but
it scares the bejesus out of me. Maybe it was the documentation, maybe
just my simple mind, but I just couldn't grasp it. Plus it's built on
the original Helma which means it won't benefit from all the advances
going into Helma NG.
ActiveJS: it breaks my heart that Jaxer and ActiveJS never took off.
Jaxer was a radical idea but very cool. ActiveJS didn't have enough
momentum when Aptana let it go.
jQuery.Claypool: I like it. It's clean an it's clever. Does it use
CommonJS?

And regarding you're speculation into why it wasn't released by
google, I actually saw it the other way. I thought google would see
RnR as a way to launch their own framework for App Engine that would
take over. As soon as they released Java App Engine i thought RnR
would be googles killer app. It would be their way of saying "Hey Ruby
on Rails people, come try this out. We love your framework. Too bad
your language runs like balls." Then when Google release their closure
library I though 'for sure this is the remaining piece of the puzzle
that needed to get open sourced for Rhino on Rails to be released'

Anyways, those are my thoughts. Thanks everyone for letting me know
that I wasn't the only one interested in RnR.

On Nov 30, 10:28 am, chris thatcher <thatcher.christop...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> > On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 8:21 PM, Kevin Dangoor <dang...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 11:30 PM, pnewhook <peter.newh...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >>> I feel like this group would know, did anything ever come of Steve
> >>> Yegge's rails port, Rhino on Rails?
> >>>http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html
>
> >>> I just realized that in this interview he says it should be out in the
> >>> summer. That was January, 2008. Almost 2 years ago.
>
> >>>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QD9XQm_Jd4&feature=PlayList&p=4AE5C0D...
>
> >> I haven't seen anything about this in a long time. FWIW, I think it's
> >> becoming increasingly irrelevant, anyhow. What's going on with JSGI is far
> >> more interesting, IMHO.
>
> >> Kevin
>
> >> --
> >> Kevin Dangoor
>
> >> work:http://labs.mozilla.com/
> >> email: k...@blazingthings.com
> >> blog:http://www.BlueSkyOnMars.com
>
> >>  --
> >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> >> "CommonJS" group.
> >> To post to this group, send email to comm...@googlegroups.com.
> >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
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> >> .
> >> For more options, visit this group at
> >>http://groups.google.com/group/commonjs?hl=en.
>
> >  --
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Andy

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Dec 1, 2009, 4:01:59 AM12/1/09
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On Nov 30, 11:29 am, pnewhook <peter.newh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> @Kevin
> I tend to agree that there's been a tonne of Server side JavaScript
> development since Yegge started RnR. But that said, it's still be a
> very nice option. And a great source to learn from.

If anything, the JSGI stuff would complement RnR. Before WSGI and
Rack, there was a lot of friction around connecting a framework to a
server in Python/Ruby land. I think almost all frameworks moved to
WSGI/Rack after the fact.

> And regarding you're speculation into why it wasn't released by
> google, I actually saw it the other way. I thought google would see
> RnR as a way to launch their own framework for App Engine that would
> take over. As soon as they released Java App Engine i thought RnR
> would be googles killer app. It would be their way of saying "Hey Ruby
> on Rails people, come try this out. We love your framework. Too bad
> your language runs like balls." Then when Google release their closure
> library I though 'for sure this is the remaining piece of the puzzle
> that needed to get open sourced for Rhino on Rails to be released'

Not speaking for my employer (Google), but it's a stretch to ever
ascribe a single motivation to a company of 20,000 people spread all
around the world. It's definitely a logical idea to have RnR on App
Engine, but the teams that developed App Engine and RnR came from
totally different places and had totally different goals initially
(internal vs. external customers, etc.). And it's not like it's super
straightforward either, AFAIK JavaScript is only supported via the
JVM.

Andy
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