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We do think AppJet will be the platform/framework of the future, but in the present it's a little early to compare the AppJet Framework with PHP, RoR, Django, e
by aaroniba 18y ago
We do think AppJet will be the platform/framework of the future, but in the present it's a little early to compare the AppJet Framework with PHP, RoR, Django, etc.
AppJet was designed to be easy and make it possible to write cool little web apps with a small amount of code and a small amount of knowledge. From this perspective, it becomes obvious why we chose JavaScript as the server language: it reduces the number of languages you need to learn by a factor of 2.
I think it's succeeding at what it does. There are lots of cool apps in the app directory, and most are <500 lines of code in a single file. Many of these apps are written by high school students who learned programming with AppJet. Some of my favorite include {pxl,outliner,files,wikijet,agglodex,dict,livescore}.appjet.net.
We are working on improving the AppJet Framework to be good for large apps. We're also working a lot on our platform. (mrtron makes a good point about platform vs. framework elsewhere in this thread). One day, we'll tell the hacker news community that we think AppJet is a suitable replacement for PHP, Django, RoR, or whatever you're building your startup on. But we're not there yet.
In the meantime, if you want to hack up a simple database-backed web app without worrying about hosting or setting up SQL or anything, AppJet is your platform. Or if you want to learn programming with a platform that will let you do a lot knowing only a little, AppJet is your platform.
- chrisbroadfoot 18y agoWe do think AppJet will be the platform/framework of the future Could you elaborate on that more? Why will this platform be _the_ platform of the future?
- aaroniba 18y agoThe short answer is that we see problems with all the existing ones, and we think we can do better. The longer answer will be the subject of blog posts as we roll out milestones along the way.
- jimbokun 18y agoWhy would I choose AppJet over, say, Google App Engine? I haven't used either, but they seem to advertise similar use cases. As you point out, AppJet lets me use just one programming language, whereas App Engine you're going to be using Python on the backend, Javascript in the browser. Google has a proven track record in scalability. Are there other important differences between them?