Comments on: Phobos: Does Sun have a good thing under its nose?

By: Franck Yvetot

Franck Yvetot — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:08:22 +0000

Javascript is a very nice language for the client side but it still lacks a lot in terms of OO features. Reminds me of the nightmare ASP was (good for small web apps but a real pain in large projects). I would consider moving back to JS only if it was truly OO like Flashscript (I love this one and wish to have it in our browsers soon!), offered packages and was backed up by a decent community. But to be honest, I dont really see the point. There are already enough languages on the backend without adding another one. Learning PHP or Java is probably a smaller overhead than learning a new JS environment, waiting for hosting companies to support it, a community to build up (+ getting our clients to have confidence in it)..

By: Sam

Sam — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 17:01:52 +0000

“Besides, JavaScript knowledge is too cheap to build a career on it. ”

That might be true if you are a developer, but if you are building a service, the choice of language doesn’t matter, only the results.
If there is a manageable and reliable approach, which is also consistent and where there is a lot of know-how, like with javascript, then it’s a viable approach for sure.

By: George Moschovitis

George Moschovitis — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 23:31:35 +0000

Javascript end-to-end is a really interesting solution. Project Phobos seems interesting as well.

By: philigran

philigran — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 19:09:23 +0000

We called it ASP 3.0 + DHTML back in the days! Of course, there wasn’t any really serious or interesting community around JavaScript at the time, so you had to develop most of your server-side framework and libraries from scratch on your own island in order to build something manageable, but now that JavaScript is becoming some kind of lingua franca, I suppose it could become a livable option…

I just wouldn’t personally go back, as a developer, to being mainly a JavaScript expert, though. Diversity is good. Besides, JavaScript knowledge is too cheap to build a career on it.

By: char

char — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 16:37:54 +0000

umm no

By: Roberto Chinnici

Roberto Chinnici — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 19:07:55 +0000

Hi, I'm the Phobos architect. I'd like to point out this blog entry. As you can see, we've been working on making development of Phobos applications even easier. At least, it goes to prove that the project is not languishing, quite the opposite. ;-) In our experience, JavaScript (with Mozilla Rhino) works fine as a server-side language, especially in the context of Phobos, where we are happy delegating big, heavy tasks to existing Java libraries (e.g. persistence, HTTP server, Web services). By the way, an earlier comment about JavaScript being "single threaded" is off the mark, we do support multiple threads and use the Java concurrency APIs to synchronize between them. In Phobos, JavaScript ends up being used as a glue between the different components and to write core application logic and dynamic HTML page snippets, tasks for which it is well adapted. Having a real debugger helps too!

By: Brad Neuberg

Brad Neuberg — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 21:58:24 +0000

Back in the day JavaScript was called LiveScript before the Sun-Netscape rebranding. Netscape had a suite of products, including Netscape Communicator (the browser), that could be scripted with JavaScript. The server-side exposed objects that could be scripted with LiveScript (aka JavaScript), and even had a Corba ORB that was also on the client-side for client-server communication.

While I wouldn’t want standard JavaScript 1.5 or less on the server-side, being able to do ECMAScript 3.0 on the server-side would be nice.

Brad

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 03:09:04 +0000

I suspect that there are territorial issues involved, some pushing for their favorite languages, but using javascript serverside is hardly ‘disastrous’. :-)
I’ve done it for a long time now, and sofar those disasters are nowhere to be found..

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 02:30:20 +0000

Javascript is good at what it is used for on the client, but not great. It could be better. To use it on server would be disastrous. If you want a loosely typed, single threaded language to run your applictions you’ve got issues. And it’s already been done, several times, as several people have pointed out. Does anyone research their dumb-ass comments before posting? Tomorrow’s post: I hope that someday in the future they have the Internet on computers.

By: Karl G

Karl G — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 01:08:37 +0000

I don’t see a big advantage in having a single language. I like to use each language for its strengths. My biggest issues with Javascript as a language are the lack of namespaces and the poor data structures. On the other hand, I like where the language is going. If it turns into Python with curly braces and prototypes rather than classes, I won’t complain.

By: Ivan Lazarte

Ivan Lazarte — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 23:55:52 +0000

I love Javascript, but its simply too free as a language to be a good middleware layer. I do agree that it will work on the client side ,and I expect a lot more action on the front end while the backend servers will have less and less to do with Javascript.

As it gets closer to front and center, tools will evolve that will deal with solely Javascript and HTML as a platform. Aptana is a good example.

By: kourge

kourge — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 23:55:09 +0000

I would prefer to use server-side JavaScript than PHP.

By: scripkiddie

scripkiddie — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 20:13:18 +0000

I love it. I wish I could use just one language for all my needs, and since javascript won’t be replaced anytime soon from the browser why not move it to the server?
Netscape had a great idea killed by history. Let’s see if the mozilla guys can make it real, or Sun, or IBM, but for god’s sake not M$ noooooo.

By: shorty114

shorty114 — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 16:28:28 +0000

I would take PHP over JavaScript for server-side anyday. Or even RoR for that matter.

/me waits for the flames

By: Michael Mahemoff

Michael Mahemoff — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 10:59:37 +0000

Manual trackback
http://www.softwareas.com/phobos-server-side-js-redux

By: Stefan Rinner

Stefan Rinner — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 10:18:03 +0000

To cite http://www.helma.org :
“Helma is an open source web application framework for fast and efficient scripting and serving of your websites and Internet applications.
Helma is written in Java and employs Javascript for its server-side scripting environment, removing the need for compilation cycles and reducing development costs while giving you instant access to leverage the whole wealth of Java libraries out there.”

It’s mature, stable and fast (used for sites with more than 100k dynamic pageviews a day) an developing applications with it is fast and joyful (thanks to it’s builtin ORM features and the easy integration of Java libraries)

By: Dirk Steins

Dirk Steins — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 08:30:43 +0000

Besides the already listed old solutions above which supported server side JS, also Broadvision used this technologie in their server applications (BV One2One etc.) about 8 to 6 years back. Scripting in JS, extensions in C++. And they switched to Java so they could extend and script all in one language.

By: Sam

Sam — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:02:19 +0000

Actually, most new technologies appears once or twice before being finally accepted, and ypu know what.. the same is true for ajax itself.

By: Vance Dubberly

Vance Dubberly — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 23:46:47 +0000

Umm didn’t we happily kill that like 8 years ago? Netscape Enterprise Server had support for Javascript as a Server Side Language. http://wp.netscape.com/enterprise/v3.6/
Those who fail to remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

By: Dion Almaer (actually someone else who used my name)

Dion Almaer (actually someone else who used my name) — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 19:30:05 +0000

Hey guys,

We’re trying to keep our db storage costs down so please try to limit your comments. (looking at you mikael)