Disqus - Latest Comments for dorismith

Re: It's still not the language's fault.

dorismith — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:07:39 -0000

that's application-specific scripting period. Javascript will no more avoid that than AppleScript.

Keep in mind that "application-specific scripting" is what most first-time scripters are trying to do. That's why they get frustrated so quickly, because what they learned from trying to script app a doesn't apply when they try to learn to script app b.

JavaScript, unlike AppleScript, does have some ways to avoid that. One way is what Adobe's got buried under the hood of the CS suite: a full JavaScript IDE and debugger. Another is that few people are trying to JavaScript applications as their first project; instead, they get comfortable using it inside the browser sandbox, and only then do they want to do more with it. Lastly, there are plenty of solid free frameworks out there, and they make doing things cross-browser much simpler than it was just a few years ago. I suspect that if more apps were JavaScript-able, at least a few of the frameworks would be extended to cover apps darn quickly (I recommend jQuery, btw).

the only person making an OSA implementation for JavaScript is Late Night Software, and while it is a Universal binary, i don't know if it's been updated for snow, but i think it's been somewhat dormant since the 2.0.2 release. Still, you might want to take a look at it.

Oh, I've been keeping an eye on JavaScript OSA for... yowza... nearly a decade. The last release I can find was 2.0.1, which came out in November 2006. The last time Mark answered a question on the JSOSA list was August 2007. If it's not dead, it's doing a darn good impression of it (sadly!).

jstalk is like a javascript version of AppleScriptObjC, at least from what I can see. it's designed more to let you build cocoa applications with JS than to let you use JS instead of AppleScript for OSA-type stuff.

No—this is exactly what I'm saying is not true. JSTalk is like a version of AppleScriptObjC done by someone who, once, back in the 90s, may have seen some JavaScript code. Or maybe they just heard a year or so ago that JavaScript was hot again, so they claimed what they were doing was somehow related to JavaScript (why, that sounds just like what happened to LiveScript...).

But whatever it is, it is not JavaScript. The syntax is different, the style is different... Oh hell, here's another example:

AppleScript:
set o to make new box with properties {height:100, width:100, xPos:100, yPos:100, stroke:10}

JSTalk example 1:

var sketch = [JSTalk application:"Sketch"];
var doc = [sketch orderedDocuments][0]
var rectangle = [doc makeNewBox];

[rectangle setWidth:100];
[rectangle setHeight:100];

[rectangle setXPosition:100];
[rectangle setYPosition:100];

JSTalk example 2:

var sketch = JSTalk.application_("Sketch");
var doc = sketch.orderedDocuments()[0]
var rectangle = doc.makeNewBox();

rectangle.setWidth_(100);
rectangle.setHeight_(100);
rectangle.setXPosition_(100);
rectangle.setYPosition_(100);

JavaScript:

var theCanvas = document.getElementById("myCanvas").getContext("2d");
theCanvas.lineWidth = 10;
theCanvas.strokeRect(100,100,100,100);

As I said, I just don't see any similarity between the code in the JSTalk example (either version) and that in the JavaScript example.

If someone loves Cocoa, fine; they can go ahead and implement CocoaScript (or whatever they want to call it). But they shouldn't claim that it has any relationship to JavaScript when it doesn't.

Re: It's still not the language's fault.

dorismith — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:40:38 -0000

Ummm... my 2¢, from an entirely different angle:

- I hate AppleScript. I hated AS long before JavaScript was invented. After way too much effort, I came to the conclusion that no one ever really learns AS; instead, you learn AS for a single application. And then you have to learn it again for another app. And then again for a third. And then when you go back to the first code you wrote, you can't remember which of the various dialects it uses, so you have to start all over again.

- I like JavaScript. Over the last dozen-plus years, it's been very good to me. Some days, I even feel like it likes me back.

- I've never learned Cocoa, 'cause I don't do that kind of programming. I'm sure I could learn it, but I'd need to either have someone paying me to do it or give me a promise of paying work at the end of it [1]—as it is, life is too short to learn everything I'd like to learn.

Which gets me to:

- JSTalk, from the little I've looked at it, ain't JavaScript. Or at least the examples I'm seeing ain't JavaScript.

For instance:

AppleScript: tell application "iChat" to set status message to "not that hard after all"
JSTalk: [[SBApplication application:"iChat"] setStatusMessage:"not that hard after all"];
JavaScript: iChat.status = "not that hard after all";

[of course, that would be assuming that iChat (or any of Apple's apps, for that matter) actually understood JavaScript.]

Looking further at those JSTalk examples, I'm pretty confident in saying that this might be the way a Cocoa programmer sees JavaScript, but no one who works primarily with JavaScript would be able to make heads or tails of it without a lot of Cocoa background (in which case, why are they working primarily with JavaScript?).

FWIW, I wrote the JavaScript code for "The Designer's Apprentice: Automating Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign in Adobe Creative Suite 3" by Rick Ralston. He wrote the book around AppleScript, but marketing wanted the examples to also be supplied in JavaScript (because unlike AS, it's cross-platform).

Yay for JS: I found I was pretty much always able to write the same code in considerably fewer lines. Plus, cross-platform!
Yay for AS: I couldn't do most of the application to application (or any of the OS to application) code in JS, because the support just isn't there (yes, I do understand that this is the workflow issue in a nutshell).

But in terms of comparing apples to apples: when I had two code snippets that did the same thing, I always found the JS one to be both more understandable and more maintainable. JSTalk, though, appears to be neither.

[1]: If you know of anyone making this kind of offer, please put me in touch with them!

Re: And the answer to the question is….

dorismith — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:48:05 -0000

Congrats, and best of luck! If you need any freelancers, you know where to find me... ;-)

Re: @grossberg Two off the top of …

dorismith — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 01:42:14 -0000

Hey, just saw this, and wanted to say thank you for thinking of me in this context. For a gig like The Ajax Experience, I would *definitely* be available. All they have to do is ask--which they've never done.

Dori