From: James Britt <james_b@...>
Date: 2005-12-08T11:41:38+09:00
Subject: Re: RubyScript

Jacob Fugal wrote:
> On 12/7/05, Dan Diebolt <dandiebolt@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>>Of course you have to install it - you only get VBScript and JavaScript
>>functionality out of the IE box.
> 
> 
> Well, I think that's what the OP was referring to, whether any
> browsers supported it "Out of the Box". While RubyScript is cool and
> great, it's not very useful for a public site if you have to hope the
> users have installed the plugin first.
> 
> What we need, rather -- since we're pretty much stuck with JavaScript
> as the defacto standard -- is to continue to publicize the libraries
> like Prototype that make working with JavaScript much more palatable
> and, in some ways, Rubyesque.


The poorly-named Prototype.js helps hide developer interaction with 
JavaScript; you learn a set of library-specific calls, and you're done. 
You don't need to know much actual JavaScript, just someone's idea of a 
suitable API.

People who are going to write client-side Web code should just learn 
JavaScript. It isn't hard, it offers many things found in Ruby, and 
you'll know what your code is doing, and why, without loading 47k of 
library code before you've even started.   Learn what JavaScript's 
'prototype' is and what it can do.   (Casual browsing of some JavaScript 
books, though, suggest that most authors don't even mention 'prototype', 
and tend to teach the language as if it were some Java or C variant. Sad.)



James


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