Cappuccino (YC Winter 08) Brings Cocoa-Like Programming To The Web

So, in order to layout an interface you programmatically create it? And so a designer has to learn yet another language for layout?<p>We made the mistake of adopting GWT a while back and it's been nothing but headaches.<p>Now instead of the designers being able to directly design in HTML (which they all have a familiarity of), they're required to download our entire project, edit the layout classes, recompile, just to see their work.<p>We've tried to have the developers take the designers mockups and translate them into working code, but the app seems to lose that designer "touch" in the process.<p>Designers need to be able to work with a familiar canvas.

Honestly I need to dig more but I'm not sold on this route. Creating a new abstraction layer (Objective-J) on top of Javascript seems like some Architecture Astronautics to me. Why not just write this on top of JS (maybe with something like jquery?) Sites down right now or I'd try to make a more reasoned statement but sproutcore seems a better alternative.<p>I also wouldn't rule out Google rolling out something similar as well as they unify the widgets and windowing type stuff they've got from docs and spreadsheets (and Zenter for that matter).

I'm still amazed that they pulled it off. I loved Objective-C when I first learned it a few years ago and loved it even more when I wrote a few apps with it. I'm glad that its essence (in Objective-J) is gaining more traction.<p>Random notice/question: Since V8 is increasing the efficiency of property references for JS objects via hidden class objects, does that mean that Cappuccino's message routing will gain a huge speed increase?<p>Man, I just love the circular nature of this: ex-Smalltalk developers wrote the JavaScript implementation which in turn, will run Smalltalk-like message passing.

With Safari (especially with the offline features in Snow Leopard) and now Google Chrome, we have the browser technology to make rich, desktop-like webapps built with Cappuccino and Sproutcore shine.<p>I think this marks an evolution of web interfaces. I'm exited to see what people build using Cappuccino.

I'm looking forward to spending my weekend with Cappuccino. My main desktop product is developed in Cocoa, but I'd like to expand it onto the web and the iPhone. Cappuccino looks like it might handle the web side of that quite well.<p>I tried Sproutcore, and while I'm impressed with what's been done so far it takes me several days of working on it to shift into Javascript/HTML/CSS mode from Obj-C. Hopefully with Cappuccino it'll be more like porting the app than rewriting the app.<p>[Edit to clarify]

I've just spent some quality time with Cappuccino - and it's not hyperbole - it's that good. I'm much more enamored of the 100% javascript approach than Sproutcore's impedance mismatching between client, server and intermediate "compiler". And all this love despite the obj-c square brackets!<p>Congratulations, 280 North! What a contribution.

I have to say, it looks very impressive. I am sure that this will spur new development, and with Chrome having a very fast JS engine putting more JS on the client side is more feasible.

Prediction: With Chrome + tools like Cappuccino, web apps are going to look completely different within a year. They'll be <i>at least</i> indistinguishable from desktop apps, and probably better (since desktop apps haven't had a lot of evolutionary pressure lately).

I've not used Cappuccino and have only tooled around with SproutCore, but I tend to agree with the SproutCore philosophy.<p><a href="http://www.sproutcore.com/2008/05/01/another-reason-not-to-clone-desktop-frameworks/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sproutcore.com/2008/05/01/another-reason-not-to-c...</a><p><a href="http://www.sproutcore.com/2008/04/22/emulating-cocoa-in-javascript/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sproutcore.com/2008/04/22/emulating-cocoa-in-java...</a><p>While Cappuccino gives me the ability to dip into JavaScript if needed, it means I have to be proficient in Obj-J, JS, CSS, HTML, DOM, ...<p>That said, it is very impressive and I think competition for the "cocoa of the web" will improve both projects.

Anyone know what a "from-scratch" learning path would look like, to build a simple web app in Cappuccino? (ie. what are the 'knowledge prerequisites'?)<p>I'm wondering whether only desktop developers will use this, or if it will be reasonable for web developers more familiar with PHP/Python/Ruby &#38; HTML/CSS to pick it up and run as well.

An impressive piece of tech but I'm not really convinced this is a good approach, especially after comparing their photo demo with Sproutcore's (<a href="http://cappuccino.org/learn/demos/FlickrPhotoDemo/" rel="nofollow">http://cappuccino.org/learn/demos/FlickrPhotoDemo/</a> vs. <a href="http://www.sproutcore.com/static/photos/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sproutcore.com/static/photos/</a>) which suggests to me that Cappuccino has serious speed problems. The situation is likely even worse on old machines with older browsers as I'm on a relatively up-to-date machine using FireFox 3.

Incidentally, those are two of the Cappuccino developers in the first photo in the new slideshow on <a href="http://ycombinator.com" rel="nofollow">http://ycombinator.com</a> (plus Patrick Collison of Auctomatic).

I don't really see how this is much different than the promise of ASP.Net (outside of the Mac vs PC argument) - Allowing programmers to create web pages the same way they create applications.<p>It's a tremendous pain in the ass and a failure for Microsoft as far as I see it.

Very excited about this release!<p>Official Cappuccino site: <a href="http://www.cappuccino.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cappuccino.org/</a><p>Download link: <a href="http://cappuccino.org/download/" rel="nofollow">http://cappuccino.org/download/</a>

Congrats guys. Of all of the YC startups that I've seen come through you've been the ones that I felt had the most potential to be a truly disruptive technology.

Hm, yet more evidence that I should be working harder on learning Objective C.

I don't know much about their product, but if I were an investor I'd have a hard time not wanting to fund hackers like that.<p>If I'm ever an angel, I'll probably have a "write a framework? here's your check" policy.

I've kept away from commenting on this one, because I can't tell. But let me let my thoughts out:<p>Frameworks are a tough thing to do as a business. People tend to flock to use mostly one. Learning a framework is a big decision, and a big time and money investment. A framework needs to be compelling to make anybody want to use it for serious stuff.<p>The key motivators are default, money and laziness. Let me give you an example:<p>- I know MFC because it's the default framework on Visual Studio - I use Django because it allows me to be lazier than if I use PHP. Also, I figure my python knowledge may make me money in the future - I use jquery because the availability of plugins means that I don't need to write those stuff myself - I plan to learn to use the iPhone SDK because there is money there<p>I don't want to use Lisp or Fortran or any of those smaller languages/frameworks because they offer me nothing.<p>I would only use your framework if it fulfilled on one of the criteria above. Right now, it's really not clear. Will it make my development work faster? Will the resulting applications be better? I can't tell, so instead of wasting 2 weeks finding out, I'd rather just close the page.

i remember hearing about cappuccino a couple years ago when i was at usc (arcaeum?). congrats guys.

What's the best practice for communicating back to the server?<p>Is it data = [CPURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:"<a href="http://myUrl" rel="nofollow">http://myUrl</a>"] ?

Is my head in the cloud, or would this work great with Chrome's 'Create Application Shortcut', or Mozilla Prism? :)

This is very impressive from a tech perspective, but what exactly does it have that native Cocoa apps don't?

Is 280 North a reference to Beverly Hills Cop II?<p>Or is it my lack of cultural awareness?

You guys are awesome.