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Hi, I'm the author of the blog post. I have to ask, wouldn't it have just been a lot easier to start from scratch with Shoes, but also start over with Hackety H

Hi, I'm the author of the blog post. I have to ask, wouldn't it have just been a lot easier to start from scratch with Shoes, but also start over with Hackety Hack? I'm not familiar with the implementation of Shoes, but couldn't you write a wrapper for an existing GUI toolkit that just had a simplified API? Or, since so much of Hackety Hack's GUI looks and acts like a web page, just implement Hackety Hack as an offline web app, where the typed Ruby code is just piped to the interpreter running on the box, and the results are returned as HTML displayed in the browser? It seems like a lot of work is reinventing basic things (text editor, GUI toolkits, etc.)

wakaflaka 14y ago
Sounds like you got it figured out. Why don't you take care of it for him?
- roopeshv 14y ago
  coz he's writing many more books related to programming for beginners, unlike you who's just got snarkiness and nothing else going for him/her
steveklabnik 14y ago
> couldn't you write a wrapper for an existing GUI toolkit that just had a simplified API? This is exactly what Shoes 4 is. We're taking advantage of JRuby to handle this for us. Packaging was a huuuuuuuge question here. > Just implement Hackety Hack as an offline web app, where the typed Ruby code is just piped to the interpreter running on the box, and the results are returned as HTML displayed in the browser? I think the biggest thing that you're not appreciating here is how many dependencies there are and how they combine: this would not include Ruby. Or any of the libraries that work with it. Then we'd have to re-write all of the GUI code to be in-browser instead of the existing render to screen stuff. > It seems like a lot of work is reinventing basic things First rule of legacy code: You can't replace it all at once. This stuff takes time. Telling one person "Can't you _just_ re-implement Mac/Windows/Linux GUI stuff (optionally re-writing it all in browser, of course) with embedded Ruby, write the app on top of it, make a website, write curriculum, promote it, and everything else?" is a bit... much, eh? (oh, funny bit of history: Shoes was actually embedded Gecko long before it was a native GUI toolkit. but that's a story for another time...) To give you an idea of size: steve at thoth in ~/src/shoes on develop $ cloc . 367 text files. 358 unique files. 613 files ignored. http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.56 T=2.0 s (150.5 files/s, 38339.5 lines/s) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 80 5749 2184 41915 Ruby 127 1471 1588 10045 C/C++ Header 66 890 825 4165 make 12 375 36 2046 Objective C 3 151 15 1845 Bourne Shell 4 168 68 877 Perl 1 213 503 731 YAML 3 156 0 249 CSS 1 2 2 167 Javascript 2 26 38 150 Bourne Again Shell 2 3 3 23 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 301 9204 5262 62213 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- steve at thoth in ~/src/hacketyhack on master $ cloc . 75 text files. 75 unique files. 45 files ignored. http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.56 T=1.0 s (64.0 files/s, 6483.0 lines/s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ruby 62 735 471 5260 YAML 2 1 0 16 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 64 736 471 5276 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- steve at thoth in ~/src/hackety-hack.com on master $ cloc . 205 text files. 198 unique files. 598 files ignored. http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.56 T=1.0 s (94.0 files/s, 2411.0 lines/s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ruby 81 383 430 1219 HTML 3 7 1 114 YAML 6 8 25 90 CSS 1 7 40 47 Javascript 2 0 9 28 CoffeeScript 1 0 3 0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 94 405 508 1498 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- steve at thoth in ~/src/hackety_hack-lessons on master $ cloc . 14 text files. 14 unique files. 43 files ignored. http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.56 T=0.5 s (8.0 files/s, 292.0 lines/s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ruby 4 24 10 112 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 4 24 10 112 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

wakaflaka 14y ago

Sounds like you got it figured out. Why don't you take care of it for him?

roopeshv 14y ago
coz he's writing many more books related to programming for beginners, unlike you who's just got snarkiness and nothing else going for him/her

steveklabnik 14y ago

> couldn't you write a wrapper for an existing GUI toolkit that just had a simplified API? This is exactly what Shoes 4 is. We're taking advantage of JRuby to handle this for us. Packaging was a huuuuuuuge question here. > Just implement Hackety Hack as an offline web app, where the typed Ruby code is just piped to the interpreter running on the box, and the results are returned as HTML displayed in the browser? I think the biggest thing that you're not appreciating here is how many dependencies there are and how they combine: this would not include Ruby. Or any of the libraries that work with it. Then we'd have to re-write all of the GUI code to be in-browser instead of the existing render to screen stuff. > It seems like a lot of work is reinventing basic things First rule of legacy code: You can't replace it all at once. This stuff takes time. Telling one person "Can't you _just_ re-implement Mac/Windows/Linux GUI stuff (optionally re-writing it all in browser, of course) with embedded Ruby, write the app on top of it, make a website, write curriculum, promote it, and everything else?" is a bit... much, eh? (oh, funny bit of history: Shoes was actually embedded Gecko long before it was a native GUI toolkit. but that's a story for another time...) To give you an idea of size: steve at thoth in ~/src/shoes on develop $ cloc . 367 text files. 358 unique files. 613 files ignored. http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.56 T=2.0 s (150.5 files/s, 38339.5 lines/s) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 80 5749 2184 41915 Ruby 127 1471 1588 10045 C/C++ Header 66 890 825 4165 make 12 375 36 2046 Objective C 3 151 15 1845 Bourne Shell 4 168 68 877 Perl 1 213 503 731 YAML 3 156 0 249 CSS 1 2 2 167 Javascript 2 26 38 150 Bourne Again Shell 2 3 3 23 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 301 9204 5262 62213 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- steve at thoth in ~/src/hacketyhack on master $ cloc . 75 text files. 75 unique files. 45 files ignored. http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.56 T=1.0 s (64.0 files/s, 6483.0 lines/s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ruby 62 735 471 5260 YAML 2 1 0 16 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 64 736 471 5276 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- steve at thoth in ~/src/hackety-hack.com on master $ cloc . 205 text files. 198 unique files. 598 files ignored. http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.56 T=1.0 s (94.0 files/s, 2411.0 lines/s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ruby 81 383 430 1219 HTML 3 7 1 114 YAML 6 8 25 90 CSS 1 7 40 47 Javascript 2 0 9 28 CoffeeScript 1 0 3 0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 94 405 508 1498 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- steve at thoth in ~/src/hackety_hack-lessons on master $ cloc . 14 text files. 14 unique files. 43 files ignored. http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.56 T=0.5 s (8.0 files/s, 292.0 lines/s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ruby 4 24 10 112 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 4 24 10 112 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------