Possible New Features - open for comment

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by PWCDEMO >> Thu, 22 Aug 2002 7:25:18 GMT

- Support for web services (like .Net or JAX-RPC)
- Support for automated unit testing (like jUnit)
- Ability to mark a method or property as deprecated (like in Java - would allow a developer to 'leave it now (to ease migration), but delete it later')
- Support for Design Patterns (like Singleton class in .Net or Session Bean in J2EE- could be done through provision of templates/code examples)

- Chris

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by JensRichnow >> Mon, 26 Aug 2002 2:48:44 GMT

Yes, I support your suggestions.

Support for web services will become more important sooner than later, unless Jade decides to stays 'closed' and support will look like 'workarounds' done by individual developers.

Automated Unit Testing can be done by creating your own testing schema similar to JUnit. Lack of interfaces in Jade however cries for 'workarounds'. To have a testing framework incorporated in the RootSchema would be marvellous!

From a developers point of view any step in the direction of supporting design patterns and refactoring is a big plus. If we look at some Java IDE's (such as JTogether, JDeveloper, IDEA, etc.) we find various support for design patterns, refactoring and modelling (UML).

To highlight a point raised previously in another thread: Out there in the Jade Developer "Community" are many keen people to offer their expertise and help in implementing many of the feature suggestions raised here and elsewhere. It might seem that developers just want more and more features given by the plant (yes, to a certain degree that is true). However, a cooperation between the plant and developers would raise the level of productivity enormously. One possibly solution would be to allow for the development of plugins/addons for the Jade IDE. Benefits would be mutual as such plugins/addons can be made available to the wider development community and possibly incorporated into future releases of Jade.

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by PWCDEMO >> Thu, 29 Aug 2002 1:47:47 GMT

Hey,

I totally agree with you on your last comments.

Jade is lacking the kind of community that .Net and Java currently have. I see this lack of community as the number one that thing holding Jade back.

The lack of developer community support contributes to:
- Very few example applications/code snippets. As someone pointed out to me the other day, Erewhon seems to be very old. Where is something resembling the Sun Pet Shop application?
- Sparse documentation (only 'official' documentation covers Jade)
- Lack of open source code, tools, frameworks. For example, toolkits for SOAP have been made by many other developer communities (e.g. .Net, Java, Perl)
- Lack of examples of new technologies (e.g. Web services, Unit testing) in use
- Difficult to find additional developers (Critical for larger projects) - Little discussion about architecture and design in Jade (it would be nice to read about successful Jade projects and architectures)

Many times, in the process of doing something 'new' or 'different' in Jade, I find myself looking at Java and .Net code and discussions. In fact, I often use code written in another language by compiling it as dll's.

IDE plug-ins would be a great start to fostering the Jade community.

I'm not sure how (if) this community problem can be solved but something needs to be done to work towards it. Maybe the development community within Jade (the company) is strong and this is why there isn't much information flowing out (i.e. lack of Jade representative postings). I wonder if there are internal Jade newsgroups that non-Jade-company Jade developers don't have access to.

I think enhancing the community would greatly increase the productivity of Jade developers and the popularity of Jade.

It is nice to exchange ideas with people outside my organisation about these matters, thanks JensRichnow

- Chris

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by synergyfocus >> Mon, 2 Sep 2002 0:51:11 GMT

Difficult to find additional developers (Critical for larger projects)

Why not start a new newsgroup for Jade Vacancies?
Personally I've found that most doors have opened not from advertised vacancies, but from word of mouth, and by sending my CV around various Jade companies and seeing what they have - but why not make it easier on everyone and have a Jade Vacancies Newsgroup?

There never seem to be that many Jade jobs in the papers or coming through the agencies, so where are these larger projects that have trouble sourcing Jade developers? Do they not advertise?
I for one have finally got sick of moving my family around the country chasing Jade jobs from one place to the next, (cause they never seem to be in the city you have just moved to.., unless you like smog and red and black of course...) so have decided to stay put in Wellington, and wait for a Jade job to blow across the Cook Strait. Still waiting....

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by wxv >> Sun, 1 Sep 2002 1:11:34 GMT

How about something much more radical?

Move jade into the .NET world altogether. The jade client could host the ...NET runtime and allow any kind of language to access the Jade Database. JadeScript would continue to be the easiest language since it would be the most natural way to access the jade object model. Other .NET languages would probably need to be much more explicit and make more calls.

It would be a lot of work, and im not sure how it would effect things like the thin client, but it would bring the enormous advantage of interoperability and the vast amount of existing .NET api's and components to Jade.

Probably a pipe-dream