Morfik and Rapid Development of Modern Web Apps

Bobby Jasper writes to tell us that The Firebird Database Community News has an interesting writeup on Morfik, a new development tool for beginning web applications. Morfik boasts increased developer productivity going so far as to draw comparisons between themselves and the current industry as VB 1.0 was to GUI development. After five years of development they are getting ready to release an evaluation version of their software, might be worth a look.

Well its got the buzzwords

[Viol8]

"Revolutionary new", "smart client" , "feature-rich", "unplugged", "ground breaking".

Perhaps I'm a cynic but I always feel that a products real value is inversely proportional to
the amount of marketdroid BS in the write-ups. If I'm correct then this is just Yet-Another-IDE
that is (and wow, like this is so radical dude , well if would be if it was 1990 again) - a Smart
Client! Jeez... how many times we been here before?

Interesting, but...

[BladeMelbourne]

Interesting, but in every company I have worked at; the language used depends upon the current hosting environment used by the client.

I'm all for "increased developer productivity", however in the work place I have yet to even use Ruby.

Oh well, .NET 2.0 is sure to kill me (or fry my chip due to the CPU requirements or their IDEs) so I guess it doesn't matter anyway.

Lot's of nice words, but where is the software?

[master_p]

For something so grand as they claim, their first job would be to post an evaluation download for everyone to see. I followed the links, but I found nothing; I only found lots of buzzwords, claims and hype.

I don't claim Morfik is vaporware. But let's see it first, and then we can say if it is indeed 'VB 1.0 for the web'.

Languages & Morfik

[jurt1235]

Morfik claims to be the next generation IDE. Totally for the webbrowser. So what do they build it with: Delphi.
That is not being true to yourself. Build an AJAX version than to show the power of what you believe in.
An AJAX version would also make the more and more preferred development environments accessible to them: Mac OS X and Linux (Around me I hear more and more developers choosing for Linux as their main platform, and if Apple would release OS X for the cheap intel hardware, that they will try that too, at least just to see).

No kidding

[nmb3000]

I tend to agree.

Besides, wasn't Slashdot just bashing Visual Studio [slashdot.org] and other "shake 'n bake" development tools? Why is this "unplugged" and "groundbreaking" new IDE so great? It "rots brains" faster?

Look ma! Morfik made a web-based CRM app, and I helped!

Faster != better when you have no idea how your application works or what makes it tick. Needing to call tech support when your web form breaks for some reason is not a step forward in development.

Re:Well its got the buzzwords

[a.d.trick]

Indeed. Not to mention that "smart client" is actually a Bad Thing. The web is egalitarian and ideally a web site or web application should be able to cater to all User Agents, whether they're smart or dumb. Things like asyncronus server requests through javascript should be the icing on the cake.

They are trying to use javascript way more than it should be. Program logic should be on the server side and when it is not you start having lots of problems with security holes as well as bugs because browsers have buggy javascript interpreters.

Re:Where are the web standards

[sgt101]

I think you've confused interactive site development with good site design. It's pretty easy to write a bad GUI for a stand alone app (desktop) in Java or C++, just as it's pretty easy to write a bad page design for a page centric app on the web. The point is that AJAX lets you write non-page centric apps on the web, and this tool supports that.

Actually, I take it as a good sign that they are focusing on their tech and not their site.

Why is this even on /.?!

[Qa1]

This is basically a commercial for some source software package. They haven't released code. They haven't even releasd a closed source evaluation version. All they "released" is some web page with lots of hysterical marketing hype and unsubstantiated vague buzzwords ("JST").

So why, again, is this on /.?

Re:What Morfik is

[gtoomey]

Yes your ad is all wel and good.

Why didnt the Morfik web site say that? Its marketing gobblygook.

What the fuckity fuck?

[kmmatthews]

How can anyone possibly claim this isn't an ad?

It's an "article" for a CLOSED SOURCE, WIN32 VAPORWARE PRODUCT that LIKENS ITSELF TO VISUAL BASIC.

For god sakes, that's like saying "WOW!!! THIS IS AS FUN AS AIDS!"

Re:Lot's of nice words, but where is the software?

[rjshields]

and it creates for you an executable that has Apache and Firebird embedded in it

Good god.

Welcome to the 100Mb calendar application.

Looks cool but?

[codepunk]

Ok nifty idea but how does it perform in the real world. How well does it optimize the code to make up for the dismally slow IE java script engine. Both browsers could use some java script engine speed improvements but IE darn sure needs alot of help. Of course I don't expect the monopoly to do this as it is not in their best interest to allow applications to run in this fashion as it neutralizes their platform.

Re:Where are the web standards

[Surt]

But ... for a web development firm to have no one on site who understands web development well enough to write up a good site ... it doesn't bode well for how their tool will understand web development. Or in other words: if their site suggests no one there either cares enough or knows enough to develop a good site for their product, why should I trust that they know enough or care enough to develop a good website development tool.