Today i had a short play with Sproutcore (the “Cocoa for the Web” JS framework used by and optimized by Apple for me.com) for the first time. I was a little surprised with what i found.
The Great
- The development tools are in Ruby using the merb framework
- The development tools adopt a Rails like MVC architectural pattern, with commands like
sc-gen model example/contact
sc-gen controller example/detail
sc-gen view example/card
- The development tools include build tools that prepare all JS, HTML and CSS ready to be distributed.
sc-build - The development tools have a bunch of ruby (rails-style) helpers
<%= button_view :my_button, :label => 'Here is a functioning button!' %>
The not so great
- It doesn’t work with the latest version of Merb (0.9.9 RC1) and doesn’t appear happy even having it around (even if 0.9.4 is installed, if seems to force a removal of 0.9.9 in order to work) – Patch submitted, but only recently.
I’ll keep playing and posting what i find, plus an app or 2 as i create them.
Check out these links for more info:
Merb RC1 was released yesterday, and the patch was submitted yesterday. The not so great therefor imo is that Merb is very unstable lately. Once merb v1 is out the door (end of Oct) it should be super stable, or so the merb core team promises.