I am still building large WO projects (deployment size, not employment size :O ) and will until I retire :)
On Mar 5, 2014, at 3:12 PM, Ramsey Gurley <rgur...@smarthealth.com> wrote: > > On Mar 5, 2014, at 4:37 AM, Jürgen Simon <si...@webtecc.com> wrote: > >> Hello, >> >> this is not a technical inquiry, more a temperature check on the business >> side of WebObjects. It is my impression that at least in Germany, after the >> 2008/2009 crisis the market for WebObjects-projects has really been down a >> lot. I have been looking hi and lo for opportunities to work with WO again, >> but apart from self-initiated projects there was nothing going on. >> >> Is this perception limited to Germany or is it even just me? Are there any >> project marketplaces for WO that I am not aware of? How much of a future >> would you guys think WO really has? >> >> Kind Regards, >> Jürgen > > > Having worked with WO for a while now, I think it’s safe for me to say WO has > a limited future. > > For one, Apple did not open source it when they left it for dead in > 2008/2009. The “Apple only hardware” license restriction is pretty lame too. > I seems they did this hoping to kill it. It appears they are looking at other > solutions besides WO for their own usage. The last time I saw an @apple.com > address break radio silence, it was on the Cayenne list. It seems pretty > tragic, but that’s what it looks like from the outside. > > Two, Anjo left Wonder. Mike was poached by Apple and has been MIA since. > Without Anjo to keep people in line, I’ve noticed the quality of > contributions have declined. Without Mike’s tireless contributions, I’ve > noticed most commits are not in the form of great useful new frameworks, but > refactoring of old frameworks. Refactoring combined with loose quality > control has made Wonder something that went from “I can’t wait to update my > repo” to “I’m scared if I update my repo, stuff is going to break… again.” > > Third, the type of applications WO excels at are no longer in demand. If you > make an app that requires someone to poke in 42 text fields on their > smartphone, you are doing it wrong. But that’s exactly the sort of app that > WO is purpose built to handle. Dynamic URLs are universally hated by the > marketing department. "Why can’t we just have domain.com/page?? WO URLs are > horrible for SEO!!” WO can give you a table of data sorted and nested inside > another table of data which is also sorted and nested as deep as you want to > go. Automatically. And it will keep track of all that, but then... who’s > going to read a table that big on a 5” screen? The design department wants > minimal info on the page, please. Just the facts ma’am. Those sort of desktop > apps have already been built. They’re now in maintenance mode. No one is > going to rewrite them in WO any sooner that someone is going to rewrite all > the WO apps in something else. > > Fourth, the tooling is showing bit rot. Q is the only person left who really > has a handle on how WOLips works. My copy of rule modeler is buggy as hell > and crashes 50% of the time I try to launch or save something under > Mavericks. Installing WO for dev or deployment requires a PhD in WebObjects. > Monitor slowly becomes less and less responsive until you’re forced to reboot > it. Even when it works, it doesn’t really monitor everything I need to know. > Memory, cpu, disk space? Oh, go get Nagios and add to your administration > nightmare. > > Finally, there’s the learning cliff involved with WO. WO developers are as > rare as unicorns. Learning WO in depth takes months/years to do, even for an > experienced Java developer. In a lot of cases, the WO app that is out there > isn’t in prime condition and requires lots of maintenance. It was probably > built on an existing legacy database with a schema that goes against the WO > way. That results a sub-optimal development experience with WO. Especially > for the uninitiated. Nobody is going to learn it on the job and think “Wow, > this is so great! I love WebObjects!!" > > This is not to say WO is bad. WO is great for what it does. If you have a > mac, you know WO already, you don’t mind the tools are a little creaky, you > have your own wonder fork, you are okay with writing whatever frameworks you > need, you are the dba, and it works for you.. knock yourself out. I don’t > expect to see a lot of new faces around though. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. > Webobjects-dev mailing list (Webobjects-dev@lists.apple.com) > Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: > https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/webobjects-dev/kenlists%40anderhome.com > > This email sent to kenli...@anderhome.com _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. 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