First Look At Palm's Mojo SDK 128
snydeq writes "Peter Wayner puts Palm's Mojo SDK through its paces and finds the general outline of the system solid and usable despite 'numerous rough edges and dark, undocumented corners.' The main draw, of course, is the reliance on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which lower the barriers to entry, though with Mojo, HTML and JavaScript do at times work against each other, with JavaScript occasionally 'wiping out anything you do with HTML.' But more than anything, Wayner sees the current version of Mojo as 'merely the start of access to a very fertile platform. 'Developers are actively digging into the Linux foundations of the Pre and finding they can build tools that work with the raw guts of the machine. Some are talking about writing Java services underneath,' Wayner writes, pointing to sites such as PalmOpenSource.com and PreCentral.net that are cataloging dozens of apps that come complete with the source code. 'I know people are doing similar things with the iPhone — such as selling the source to people who must install it themselves — but the entire scene emerging around Palm has a much more organic and creative vibe. It's not getting hung up on parsing and reparsing the App Store rules.'"
Re:Real programming/scripting language (Score:1, Informative)
Javascript is actually an awesome powerful language with features rivaling Ruby. The problem isn't the language, the problem is the development environment. Edit, Upload, and Pray isn't very productive. Get yourself some real Javascript (ECMA-script) debugging tools and enjoy a great language.
Someone want to reply with some suggestions. I'm using the Firefox plugin Javascript Debugger and Profiler, but I don't do much Javascript these days and I'm sure there is much better.
Re:Real programming/scripting language (Score:5, Informative)
If you're programming javascript and still haven't learned about Firebug or even Webkit (aka Safari/Chrome) inspector, you're doing it wrong.
Firebug is a better "development/debug" tool than many IDEs, it's usability is insane. For me, Firefox+Firebug and a syntax-highlighting editor that can edit files over SFTP is all that's really needed (ok, svn support is nice).
Re:Simplicity is Complex (Score:3, Informative)
The first HTML browser was written in that esoteric language.
Re:What the hell? (Score:4, Informative)
But not it isn't Linux.
Uh, what?
Re:Simplicity is Complex (Score:3, Informative)
JQuery's syntax is anything but sugar. It's a hideous mess. It's as if C++ and Lisp fucked and shat out an assbaby.
I like JQuery, for what it does, but for serious...
Re:What the hell? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Someone Way More Schooled Than Me... (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_compilation [wikipedia.org]
Short answer: your Java program will run natively, as it gets compiled at runtime.
The problem with Java isn't the speed, it's the memory overhead and startup time of the runtime.