SC2.0 & TemplateViews, some short thoughts
It’s been a really long time since I’ve posted any tips, sorry. Mostly because I moved onto other projects & wasn’t using SproutCore for awhile. I started using it again a month or two ago, so onto some tips.. but first I just wanted to comment on the SC 2.0 bit… I see a lot of people asking the same questions over and over “What do I use” and worse, people trying to jump on the new hotness then finding a big empty void of support & help.
Lastly, I’ll preface this with a disclaimer before I get started. This is all purely my opinion.
The only applications I’m aware of that have successfully been shipped and are well known SproutCore applications, are built on SC 1.6. (Including MobileMe) None of these applications use “TemplateViews” and none of them use SC2.0. Why do I point that out? People want to jump on the new hotness, but, none of that stuff is proven, or fully developed yet. If you want a platform to build applications on, the only one that CURRENTLY EXISTS, is SC1.6 (ignoring templateviews)
Support, examples, anything, it all currently is built on SC1.6 and pre that. Blog posts outside of the main sproutcore.com website about template views, or how to do XYZ in SC2.0? Not likely to arrive for awhile.
There is nothing *there* yet. TemplateViews don’t fully integrate well with the other parts that must be used, because templateviews aren’t fully featured yet. SC2.0 isn’t fully featured yet, and more importantly, there aren’t any apps, and likely very few developers actually shipping apps on it.
Having said that, SC2.0 is clearly the direction one branch of SproutCore seems to be going, so *eventually* I imagine it *will* be fully featured, it will have a widget library, controls, and full integration, including a bunch of people blogging about how to use it, with examples, and get lots of well known apps that were written in SC2.0.
If you want to develop a SproutCore application, need support and help, you are better off using SC1.6. I mention not using templateviews because they aren’t fully featured, and you are going to have to go use ‘non templateview’ features at some point for your app, which is when you are going to run into all the rough edges, the stuff that hasn’t been worked on for years (SC1.6 and pre), the stuff that doesn’t have any apps built on it (templateviews , handlebars, and sc2.0) and thats going to slow you down, cause you pain, and make you not like SproutCore.
Now, I probably upset some people, I’m sorry for that. I think SC2.0 will be great, but I think its really bad to distract people with its existence when its functionally unusable for practically anyone’s serious application building needs. One more thing to note, is that MobileMe clearly shipped some really successful applications, on both Mobile and Desktop mind you, using SC1.6. Clearly its possible to build great applications with SC1.6, and you don’t need to rush to the new hotness just to make great apps with SproutCore. SC2.0 clearly intends to make developing those applications easier & better than SC1.6, but again, its not done!
I hope that this entire post is totally invalid in 6 months once SC2.0 has all the same resources SC1.6 has behind it, a community of people that have successfully shipped apps, understand all its parts, and it actually has a fully fleshed out set of tools to help you build those apps. Make no mistake, SC2.0 is clearly the intended future, but, at this point, its still IN the future.
So, Hold your horses… evaluate if you REALLY need to use TemplateViews & SC2.0, or if you actually just need to develop a great web app, because if you want to do the latter, its probably a safer bet (and less painful road) to use SC1.6(without TV) .
