[LINK] AJAX May Be Considered Harmful

[Carl Makin]

Morning All,
We're running an build and release management tool called  
"Tableaux" (http://www.incanica.com/tableaux.html) that started out  
as just a java servelet but over the past couple of years has  
migrated to being heavily AJAXified.

It's an impressive piece of software that, if it failed, would  
paralyse software development here.  It's robust, reliable and the  
users love it.

Yes, AJAX can be a complete horror, but that's no worse than the  
majority of IE6 or flash only websites out there.

On 08/01/2007, at 7:37 PM, Rick Welykochy wrote:

> AJAX May Be Considered Harmful
> Slashdot
> http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/01/06/216245.shtml
.
.
> AJAX applications just aren't solid or stable, for the most part.  
> We tried to integrate a number of them into our network here, and  
> frankly each attempt went terribly. I'd like to think it was just  
> one application vendor or AJAX toolkit that was problematic, but  
> that wasn't the case.

Tableaux runs 24/7 here, has up to 30 concurrent users and manages  
deployments across 20 environments.  It's rock stable and very  
responsive.  We have it running on a Sun v280 which has dual 750Mhz  
SPARC IIIi processors, which is not that big a box.

.
.
> All of our AJAX trials were abysmal failures. That's why we're  
> sticking with the existing Perl- and Java-based systems that we  
> currently use. They perform far better on much fewer resources,  
> actually do what the users want, avoid violating the most common of  
> conventions, and they do what they're supposed to. I'm sorry to say  
> it, but AJAX might just be the worst technology I have ever had to  
> deal with.

This guys sounds like he's had a nightmare, but our experience is  
quite different.  Mind you we're only using one AJAX app, but it's  
fast, reliable and easy to use.

AJAX has it's problems, but give it some time to settle down and mature.


Carl.