[geeks] javascript tutorial sought?

[Brooke Gravitt]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 12:29 PM, Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
>> You can reduce the overhead by tuning the garbage collector in the JVM,
> but that's a lot of work.
>
> Peace...  Sridhar


A lot of work? I don't know that I'd say it's a lot of work. If you're
unfamiliar with java, yes. If you're creating a client/server application
stack this is probably the last thing you'll deal with - no premature
optimization. I'd wager by the time he completes his app stack this will be
minimal effort.

But to the original discussion, there are many limitations as far as
creating browser-based web apps go - not everything can/should be done in
the browser. Aside from being stateless ( and the hacks you have to
implement around this, ) there are the myriad non-protocol issues. Namely:
browser version, vendor specific gotchas, load balancing, session affinity,
session persistence, etc.

Will you be supporting the "major" vendors (Safari, IE, FireFox) or are you
going to include others like OmniWeb, Opera, etc? What about older versions?

If you're looking to create a cross-platform solution, I think there are two
ideal ways to go:

1) Use java to implement the client. Should run anywhere there is a JRE -
target J2ME, and you've got handheld/phones as well. Bonus points for
abusing Eclipse as the GUI.

2) Write the bulk of client code in lua, python, etc. Use native libaries (
.NET, Cocoa, X11 ) for each platform for the interface shell.

Brooke