Programmer`s thoughts: More Details on Microsoft's plans to ruin jQuery

Thursday, March 18, 2010

More Details on Microsoft's plans to ruin jQuery

Visual Studio Magazine: "Microsoft is working in a number of directions, including databinding, the script loader and contributing to development of templating functionality as part of the jQuery core."
Oh, no Microsoft! Please, please don't ruin jQuery! Don't make it as insanely overcomplicated as your own AJAX.NET. Don't mix together JavaScript client code with server-side "loaders". Don't you understand that RESTless WEB client is not the same as .NET server or Win desktop?!

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Lelando · 784 weeks ago

After reading the actual Blog post from the Microsofty who's in charge of their new involvement w/ jQuery, and then many subsequent blog posts from MS-haters and jQuery fans alike, one thing I keep seeing is clear: most people aren't reading the whole story.

Nearly every response I've read misses one very important thing: MSFT will NOT be directly contributing to or coding for the jQuery project. They will be INdirectly contributing the same way everybody else does: by writing proposals that the jQuery core team can take or leave as they see fit.

So, stop freakin' out as though MSFT is gonna ruin jQuery. If jquery gets ruined by any of this, it's because the core team took bad advice, and NOT because MSFT changed something. Geez, people, what a great way to take your hatred and just jump to conclusions without knowing the whole story. Yes, MSFT has made some bad choices in the past, but they have also made some good ones. Just like any other business, they're run by human beings, and just like you or me, those human beings are bound to get some things right and other things wrong. So chill out, and wait to jump on they hyper-critical bandwagon till you know the whole story. Seriously.

1 reply · active 783 weeks ago

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Vladimir Chernya · 783 weeks ago

Wouldn't you (as a jQuery developer) refuse $n * 10^6 from MSFT?

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Lelando · 784 weeks ago

BTW, here's the link to the original post from Microsoft's Stephen Walther announcing their involvement: http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2010/03/16...

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Lelando · 784 weeks ago

(I really should have gathered all my info before submitting the first time.) Here's the most important quote of the article:

"We are contributing to the open-source jQuery project in the exact same way that any other company or individual from the community can contribute to jQuery. We are writing proposals, submitting the proposals to the jQuery forums, and revising the proposals in response to community feedback. The jQuery team can decide to reject or accept any feature that we propose. "

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vkelman 34p · 784 weeks ago

Thanks, Lelando. Since I'm the owner of this blog, it allows me to edit my comments. I did it several times while you were forced to add new ones. Sorry about hat. BTW, I often use Stephen Walther's ASP.NET book and bought his MVC book too. He is an interesting author.

Yes, I over-exaggerated :)
My concern, though is that MS has a long history of promoting-by-example of a very bad tight-coupled Win Desktop - like way of Web programming. And because there are so many developers who is using MS technologies (myself being .NET Web developer, C#, F# and MVC lover), there is a big danger of bad influence on those developers using jQuery as a part of their .NET work. Microsoft's approach on AJAX, AJax Toolkit (which was mentioned in that article) which heavily mixes .NET server-side code generation and client-side JavaScript, is insane. It creates incredible hard-to-understand code.

And no, I don't think MS would be able to impose bad design decisions on an excellent jQuery core team. (BTW, I see MS programmers' culture as becoming much better, more open ALT.NET - like, etc. )

Please also see my older "‘The WebForms Rant’ by karl Seguin" post and many excellent post by Karl Seguin at <a href="http://codebetter.com/blogs/karlseguin/default.as..." target="_blank">http://codebetter.com/blogs/karlseguin/default.as...

3 replies · active 784 weeks ago

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Lelando · 784 weeks ago

Thanks! I'm glad to see you're recognition of some of the improvements coming from Redmond as of late. I'm not a Softy, but I do live in the Seattle area, so I am inundated w/ MSFT pretty much all the time. As such, I see both the good and bad coming out of their campus, and find it especially distasteful when people gripe about MSFT (or anything else, for that matter) out of habit or hatred, rather than for *real* reasons. That 'fanboy' attitude (or the inverse), doesn't sit well with me, no matter what it is someone's a fan (or hater) of.

For example, while I, like most web devs out there, have an extreme distaste for their earlier (and might I say 'horrific') browsers, I also have to give props where props are due: they've recognized the error of (many of) their ways and are slowly but surely making good with their newer products. IE8, for example, isn't a huge P.O.S. like past versions... it's not perfect, but it's a *lot* better to work with and code for.

Thanks again!

Cheers,
Lelando

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Lelando · 784 weeks ago

BTW, I re-read my original response... I guess my annoyance at the huge number of posts and blogs misunderstanding or misstating the subject was starting to get to me, cuz I took it all out on you, and got a little 'flamey' in my tone. Apologies. -Lelando

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vkelman 34p · 753 weeks ago

"The WebForms Rant" is located at http://goo.gl/E7a5

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vkelman 34p · 784 weeks ago

No problem, I need someone to stop me and give a reality check as well.
Regarding IE8: I basically have no complains against it (except the fact they didn't fix some small but old and annoying bugs http://pro-thoughts.blogspot.com/2006/10/incorrec... There was no way to submit error directly to IE team either. At least, I didn't find one). But it just doesn't want to work normally on neither my work machines (old Win XP and Win Server 2008 working inside Virtual machine), nor on my home machines (powerful and with freshly installed Windows 7). On both it takes enormous time to open, especially - to open new tabs. I didn't find a simple way to fix it, so I basically stopped to use it altogether, switching to to a latest Google Chrome 5 (dev channel version) with IE tab extension installed for some MS-specific testing.

2 replies · active 784 weeks ago

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Lelando · 784 weeks ago

Yeah, I'd be dead in the water if I had to rely on IE for my work. I personally love using Firefox w/ Firebug for all of my initial design/dev work, and then test in the other browsers to fix any inconsistencies as I go. To be honest, being self-taught, I learned more from using Firebug than from almost any other source, tutorial, book, etc. I wouldn't know half of what I know if it weren't for trial-and-error while using Firebug.

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Lelando · 784 weeks ago

And in the interest of full disclosure, let it be known, I am not a 'real' developer. I'm a designer whose gotten pretty good at *front-end* development w/ XHTML/CSS/jQuery, but by no means am I 'bona-fide', so to speak.

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vkelman 34p · 753 weeks ago

I'm afraid more and again that Microsoft IS in fact imposing bad design decision onto jQuery team and IS contributing directly to jQuery.
Read this article in Visual Studio Magazine: "Microsoft Contributes New Technology to jQuery" http://goo.gl/ppnA.

Again, Microsoft's own history of super-over-complicated AJAX.NET, of client side JavaScript code magically generated by server-side code in almost impossible-to-comprehend manner, of making simple things complicated makes me highly suspicious.

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RamyaRagavi 29p · 291 weeks ago

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Thursday, March 18, 2010

More Details on Microsoft's plans to ruin jQuery

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