Hehe, I’d say they’re equally daunting

I kinda envy the Java developers because they have GWT. They can do ajax with a syntax they are familiar with.

I think having something similar for TCL on AOLserver will add value to it.

I know we won’t be winning over new users but it might make existing users who have invested time and effort to learning TCL on AOLserver happier.

With respect to performance, I’m not convinced that JavaScript is the most performant language, nor whether either SpiderMonkey or Rhino are the most efficient implementations, either. As you point out, an application’s performance (typically) has little to do with the technology stack. Efficient application design (almost always) trumps the variations in performance between technologies.

I have two reasons for being excited about nsjsapi and server side javascript :

1) To answer your question above. Javascript for many back-end developers is still daunting. A tcl api based on server side implementation of javascript like nsjsapi “might” make it less intimidating and easier to develop with frameworks like jQuery, ExtJS or Prototype specially among OpenACS developers. It may also make it relatively easier to write tests for javascript based web applications using tcl.

2) Performance.

As an example, I helped program a facebook application at Solutiongrove using a very nice javascript library called jsviz that generates force directed graphs. The app (http://apps.facebook.com/friendwebs/) generates force directed graphs of your friends in facebook.

One thing we noticed is that the performance of the generated graph highly depends on not only the browser you are using but also on the PC that you are using. The faster your pc, the better the performance.

Granted that we could probably speed things up by further tweaking the javascript code or rethinking the implementation, I would always wonder if performance for users who are using less powerful machines would improve if some of the calculations to generate the graph were performed on the server instead of on the web browser.

Good luck on your talk and more power.

Best,

Hamilton

I look forward to the day when I can write real server side tcl api to generate stuff like http://extjs.com/deploy/dev/examples with ExtJs.