2011/4/8 Roland Tepp <[email protected]>: > It is true that when web applications try hard to mimic the behavior and > workflow of similar desktop apps, they are in most cases much inferior to > their desktop cousins.
Agreed. The workflow imposed by browser is different. In general, when you develop for a browser, you have less control over the workflow of the user (you have to manage the back button, multiple tabs open on the same site, etc.). > In the end - it's al about what you are actually trying to achieve. I can > see where online IDE coulde possibly ve hugely helpful in the cases where a > hosting provider offers it's facilities to help build the apps on their > platform. It's all online, there's no compilation step - just edsit and get > instant gratification/feedback, instant debugging support, seamless > versioning and backup. Done smartly it could easily allow you to transition > the dev version to staging to production with no more effort than it takes > to click a link. And in case of problems - reverting back to pevious stable > release, could be just as easy... For the transitions between dev -> staging -> production, this is all about build infrastructure. In general, the problems you have when doing this are the same no matter whether you use Eclipse, Vi, Emacs, or Eclipse Orion. A cloud enviroment doesn't solve problems like how to upgrade a database between versions. I have a number of problems with cloud IDEs: 1) I work in places in which I do not have a network connection. The train, customer sites. Also, to run over the network you need a good network connection, otherwise it can be slow. 2) Even within a team, developers will have different development environments: they may start off the same, but change over time: to fix a specific bug, I need such and such data in my database, I need to point to such and such a web service, I need to make such and such a web service fail at a particular time. Personally, I use JRebel for dev (personal license, not shared with the rest of the team), so I need a different env & build. Using a remote machine just makes this sort of manipulation more difficult. For integration, we have a single machine. But that's a VM that is available on the (company) network. This could be deployed in the cloud fairly easily. 3) It doesn't solve any hard (recurrent) problems. I still have to have a working deployment script to update the database, install the right products in the right place, reboot the servers if necessary. So a cloud development & deployment environment would slow me down & not really solve any important issues. I can see some benefits, but I'm yet to be convinced. Matthew. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
