

Bombax: OS X Web Development Platform - bensummers
http://www.bombaxtic.com/bombax/

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Padraig
Bizarre! I guess it could be tempting for long time Cocoa developers who don't
already know Rails or PHP? Though if they're building a basic website,
rudimentary PHP would be less hassle, and if they're building a web app and
want familiar territory, Cappuccino would be a better choice.

The trend in web apps is to do more of the work client side through Javascript
(see GWT, SproutCore and Cappuccino) so a new server side framework seems a
bit late to the party.

Performance as a result of compiled code seems to be the only real selling
point, and in my experience, server-side code performance is not a widespread
problem...

I don't begrudge someone hacking together something new for the fun of it, but
this comes across as a real company trying to make a profit.

Who's going to actually use this?

~~~
allertonm
+1

I have a lot of time for Objective-C and Cocoa for desktop and mobile
development. I'd go so far as to say it's a huge factor in the success of the
Mac and iPhone platforms. It's pretty unique in supporting AOT, compiled-to-
native executables while offering dynamic language and runtime features.

However the reasons it works so well for those purposes (low memory footprint,
fast application startup time) don't seem very relevant for server development
- and the downsides (#1 being the ability of coding mistakes to corrupt memory
and/or abort the process) become huge liabilities for a server. So my guess is
that this framework is going to come out on the wrong side of any cost/benefit
analysis.

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blasdel
Everyone's correctly assuming that using this for hosting a public service on
the internet would be an awful idea.

But if you have a desktop Mac or iPhone app that needs a localhosted web
interface or HTTP API, this approach could easily be way better than dealing
with a second language runtime.

~~~
boucher
Probably true. There's one or two other tiny embedded Objective-C web server
designed for that purpose out there.

We've got just such an app, but we're running our backend process in
JavaScript.

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tptacek
Web apps in Objective C --- the second-least safe programming language on the
market. Oh please, oh please, build your next huge application in this.
College tuition for my kids is freaking me out.

~~~
s-phi-nl
Why is Objective-C so unsafe? From what little I know about it, I see no
reason why it should be less safe than, say, Smalltalk.

If Objective-C is the second-least safe language, what is the least safe
language?

~~~
tptacek
Smalltalk is garbage-collected. ObjC deals in raw memory addresses. It's
actually _less_ secure than C, as I see it.

~~~
allertonm
This doesn't affect your point, since ObjC does still deal in raw memory
addresses, but it has supported garbage-collection since Objective-C 2.0 (i.e
since Leopard/10.5)

~~~
tptacek
Yeah, I need a better term for high-level-language than "garbage collected" (I
do some Cocoa dev in my spare time, and I do like being able to ignore
reference counting. Oh! Reference counting! Another security weakness with
Cocoa.)

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Maro
The guy on the picture is using a PC!

~~~
telemachos
Stock photos strike again...

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docmach
If they wanted an Objective-C web framework it seems like they would have been
better off improving GNUstep Web. From looking at the site I don't see what
makes this special other than using Cocoa. It might have some compelling
features that GNUstep Web doesn't, but they don't make it easy to find out
what they are.

~~~
Zev
Running on Mac OS X with the newer, shinier ObjC 2.0 runtime is greatly
preferred to running on GNUstep. Not to mention GCD or Core Data (GNUstep Core
Data is primitive in comparison. Not to mention, you know, basically a dead
project).

Of course, I'm more likely to just use Ruby or Cappuccino if I need to make
something more complicated than a basic website. But I can see the appeal in
this sort of framework.

~~~
boucher
Running on Mac OS X is a pretty tough sell, though. Ultimately, it's far more
expensive than comparable servers running Linux or even Windows. Most of this
is that there aren't many people offering OS X based server solutions, but
even if you're willing to run your own hardware, Xserves are on the expensive
side of things.

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aaronbrethorst
Compiled code? Persisting Data: TBD? I think I'll stick to Rails for now. This
does sound like an interesting piece of software, though.

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yan
I would love for people to write their web apps using this framework, then pay
me to pentest them.

~~~
docmach
Why? What makes this framework better to do penetration testing on than other
frameworks?

~~~
yan
It is written in Objective-C, which is not a type-safe language.

