On Dec 29, 2008, at 11:03 AM, James Steiner wrote:
<snip>
I vote for javascript... it seems that your script is not going to be
doing anything that should bump up against a cross-platform issue...
It's just text input, processing, text-output... what could be
simpler? For any of the tricky (e.g. display, event, css box model)
platform quirty stuff, use a framework like jQuery.
I'm glad I asked the question. Clearly javascript is the most
ubiquitous script language, although hidden within the browser.
So the browser replaces the command-line! That has the advantage of
coming with a window system as well, which python, perl, ruby, .. lack
unless they use the "J" versions (jython, jruby, ..) which can use
Java's window system and UI toolkits.
I have to say this is a surprise but obvious enough once you really
consider the alternatives.
I'm wondering if this really means we might as well use a hosting
service or cloud system to deliver all our programs at this point. I
mean its nice that you can download Russ's nifty stunt and run it
locally, but would most folks prefer the web hosted solution to start
with? That has the additional advantage that you can use any
scripting language you'd like: Java (Either servlets or applets),
Python, PHP etc .. all on the server.
So from a simple scripting question we arrive at the observation that
your computer is pretty useless for sharing even the simplest
programs, so might as well use the browser, and just as easily, a
hosted solution with all the languages you'd like.
Sneaky!
-- Owen
PS: Steve -- This does prove the deployment problem is real and the
web solution best.
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