

New Product From 280North: Atlas - jasonlbaptiste
http://280atlas.com/

======
fauigerzigerk
These guys are awesome and I feel kind of bad to say this, but it's the
perferction of a failed idea. I've been trying these kinds of GUI builders for
almost 20 years, starting with VB and PowerBuilder, and I always ended up not
actually using them.

The usual criticism is that they generate awful code, but that's not
necessarily the case. The problem is really that these tools ask you to keep
clicking on lots of little sliders and lines and bars and shapes and then
click over there in that text box to enter a name and then select this or that
from a list or menu, wait until that three pixel graphic changes its shape
into a handle so you can drag that line over here, etc, and there's no way to
automate this.

It's a matter of taste whether you like to do it that way when you create
_one_ form, but once you create an application or two or three you have to
abstract from the repeating patterns and you can't do that with the GUI
builder.

GUI builders make you stay on the same level of abstraction forever because
they don't have the equivalent of meta programming or even just plain
procedural programming.

The reason why code built with GUI builders is so awful is not so much that
they necessarily generate bad code. It's that developers who can put up with
repeating the same clicks and drags on the same level of abstraction for years
and years are in the wrong profession and create bad code regardless of the
tools.

Programming is all about abstracting and automating stuff. The pinnacle of GUI
builder based abstraction is what Microsoft calls "user controls". All they
abstract is a bunch of widgets statically glued together on a panel. Great,
but that's like 5% of what you want to do.

I'm afraid GUI builders are hopeless for any serious programming.

~~~
gstar
You've got some good points, but Interface Builder (and I imagine Atlas)
departs fundamentally from VB and PowerBuilder in that the code doesn't live
directly behind the GUI elements. Instead, it's connected by a series of
inlets and outlets that are designed to allow for reusability and model-view-
controller disconnect.

You can also define UI things in code in Cappuccino (as well as Obj-C).

IB is optional with Obj-C, and I imagine Atlas will be optional with
Cappuccino.

~~~
ashleytowers
To be precise Interface Builder doesn't actually generate ANY code at all. You
are manipulating in-memory objects and setting their properties. When you save
your UI it's effectively just a serialized form of the objects you were
playing with.

~~~
gstar
The key point that I was trying to make is that IB is fundamentally separate
from the code that is running in the application. In traditional RAD tools
like VB, Delphi and Powerbuilder the interface and application logic are one
and the same, you literally have code behind each form and each UI element.

I didn't say anything about IB generating code.

~~~
ashleytowers
Apologies - I read "in that the code doesn't live directly behind the GUI
elements" as an inference that it lived somewhere else. I just wanted to add a
clarification in case others read it the same way.

------
hbien
That's pretty amazing. It's like Interface Builder but for Cappuccino ... and
as a web app.

I can't believe how awesome these guys are, I hope Apple acquires them and
starts using their technology for MobileMe + iWork.

~~~
numair
If you knew anything about what happened to WebObjects, you would be hoping
that such a scenario never occurred.

~~~
mpc
A summary of that would be great....

I know that Apple pushed WebObjects to the back burner when they acquired NeXT
in the mid 90s but I'm not sure why it would be bad for them to buy 280 North
today.

~~~
bonaldi
Unless there's a clear way for something to shift hardware, Apple isn't really
interested in it. WebObjects has languished, despite being killer in more than
one respect. An update (and de-java-ing) of WO tools with something like Atlas
integrated would be absolutely killer, but unless it helps them shift more
Macs in big numbers, I don't see it going anywhere.

~~~
gstar
My punt is that Apple is going to make a big enterprise play in the next 2-3
years. Time is ripe, and it can be done without a big investment in capital.

Wait until Steve Jobs publicly denounces enterprise IT as a business with no
future. He'll be right, in more ways than one.

~~~
dmix
"-enterprise IT as a business with no future. He'll be right, in more ways
than one."

Can you clarify? Because that seems very misinformed. Unless you mean on-
premise deployments, which has been on the way out for years.

With SaaS + cloud computing, Enterprise IT is just starting to get interesting
again.

~~~
gstar
I can't give this topic the justice it deserves in an HN comment, but yes I'll
clarify.

In 10 years time, the "IT Department" virtually won't exist at most small-mid
size businesses.

I think a lot of business software is going to be taken off-the-peg, or plug-
boarded from open source software as interfaces approach ubiquity and
organisations like government, banking and b2b start to expose consistent
"APIs". It's already happening now.

We also have gen X and Y moving into senior management and the internet
generation actually moving into work. Computer skills are getting to the point
of being virtually innate.

Acquiring computer equipment will be analogous in business to buying a
photocopier or some other office equipment.

</crystalball>

~~~
whitemice
Seriously? I hear this all the time; do you guys work in IT or in web
development? The web people are way over on another page. ERP is primarily the
reason IT exists and ERP packages take _DECADES_ to change - witness the
MASSIVE amount of COBOL still around (including here). ERP deployments are
complex and almost always customized.

I suspect Gen X and Gen Y (which includes me) generally doesn't have a clue at
what goes on in a "real" IT center - meaning one that is not (a) some awesome
start-up that will be forgotten dust tomorrow or (b) a web oriented consumer-
facing business. Nothing in IT is anything like "buying a photocopier" nor
will it ever be. The company that takes that approach will be run into the
ground by its competitor that innovates.

~~~
gstar
Apologies in advance if this is rambling.

I'm an IT contractor (never done web for money). My opinion was formulated
based on my experience managing an IT division over 5 years or so and also
doing various PM and architecture roles.

You can more-or-less validate the first 50% of my claim by giving a bunch of
computer literate people some brand new boxed PCs or Macs, and an internet
connection and telling them to go for it and set up their environment. They'll
be able to get things up and running, and if they have a little bit of nous
they will usually come up with something workable.

Of course, it won't be engineered. I did some work for a fairly big
manufacturer about 10 years ago that opened a small office on the east coast
of Australia. The small office got absolutely no IT support as it was off the
radar, and because of the corporate structure Finance left them alone too.

They managed to brew up the essentials of what they needed using Access for
sales/marketing, MYOB for the books and corporate webmail and hotmail. When IT
found out, they went spare and "fixed" everything. The office suffered in both
performance and morale because instead of their terrible (but working)
homebuilt CRM and accounting systems they had to use a set of ancient AS/400
apps that were about 1000ms away (no problem for interactivity because they
were on 5250 screens, but very slow turnaround). The PCs were useless too, IT
made them log in to Netware and do file/print over an 8kbps CIR Frame Relay
connection.

Government (and to a lesser extent business) exposing and unifying APIs and
SAAS probably means that in 2009 situations like the one I messily chronicled
above will scale, because the IT development and infrastructure component just
isn't required. Someone somewhere else who knows all about scaling, security,
DRP and backup has done it for them and is happy to charge a per-user-per-
month fee.

If this happened now, they might have used a 37Signals product and Salesforce
for example (no idea about the ERP side).

My current contract is a guerilla finance project to build some analysis tools
for SOX compliance that they haven't been able to get corporate IT to deliver
on for 3 years. We built a small app in Python with a web front-end (Django).
It was quick, it worked, and it's a manifestation of people realising that IT
has become commoditised and that IT doesn't have to be hard. I guess IT wanted
to do something like build some ABAP programs in SAP using consultants that
charge £800 a day on a 2 year timeline.

There's a lot of law firms, design offices and small practices that just go
out and buy some macs and never even call in IT help. It's going to happen and
keep happening, and it's difficult to see how the shift away from corporate IT
could happen if you're focussed on changing the VAT rates in FORTRAN, applying
PTFs to the iSeries, or keeping the active directory backed up. Shifts aren't
usually obvious when you're in the thick of it.

I don't think the quickest typists in the typing pool ever thought that the
managing director would type his own memos 30 years ago, either.

------
gstar
Fantastic. RAD tools for the web haven't ever been done properly.

This could be huge.

The funny thing is, it actually looks quicker and easier than IB - probably
because Objective-J is interpreted and runs in the browser, and it has the
controllers in Atlas.

------
mikeryan
I love what these guys are doing - I'm just not sold on the whole Objective-J
thing.

~~~
kqr2
Does anyone know of any large projects using Objective-J / Cappuccino besides
280North?

~~~
richcollins
Were currently using it:

<http://stylous.com/>

~~~
joubert
Cool. I browsed some of the products. Is it possible to browse by sex? When I
was looking at shoes, I saw stilettos, even though I'm not shopping for my
weekly drag show in Las Vegas.

~~~
richcollins
Sorry just women's accessories for now :-P

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mcav
Fascinating... though I now feel like an old assembly programmer saying things
like "In my day, we wrote Javascript by hand, and it only consumed suchandsuch
memory and was blazing fast... now you with your newfangled GUI builders..."

------
s3graham
Very snazzy!

I don't know how y'all plan to make money, but don't get too caught up in dev
tools! They're fun, and might be good marketing, but be sure they're actually
saving time against making the thing that people with money actually want.

------
cjoh
This really is amazing. But it makes me nervous. I'm open to the idea, but
just as I prefer using a text editor to write my HTML code rather than
Dreamweaver, I'm concerned that this can take me too far away from my web app
code.

Like any other tool, in order to use it effectively you have to master the
tool just like you'd master a language. Hopefully what's under the hood here
and the code it generates makes it easy to do that.

~~~
joubert
In order to build views with Cappuccino today, I'm doing it by hand (i.e.
subclassing for example a CPView and constructing child visuals) - this means
instancing elements such as CPTextField, CPButton, etc. and adding it to a
view.

But being able to do it visually ala Interface Builder with similar semantics
around delegates, subclassing, IBAction and Outlet concepts will rock -
speeding up development time tremendously.

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cpr
It's fascinating to watch the re-invention of the browser as a NeWS server
(client in normal terminology) from nearly 20 years ago.

Postscript imaging model == HTML5 Canvas, Postscript == Javascript.

Hmm...

~~~
wmf
But was NeWS a good idea? It seemed excessively complex to me, just like AJAX.

~~~
cpr
I didn't mean to imply it was a good idea, just that this model, like X
Windows, has already been tried before (and found wanting?).

~~~
andreyf
The one difference is that everyone has and knows how to use a browser, or
what to do if you tell them to open myfoo.com.

What percentage of the computer population knows what X Windows is, much less
has any idea how to use it?

------
andreyf
Very nice, although the demo seems a bit overly-staged. My prediction: the
quality of their debugger will make or break this company.

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joubert
Übercool. Can't wait to no longer have to build views in code.

Seems like there is a good text editor being used in Atlas, hopefully this
will make its way into Cappuccino soon!!

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swivelmaster
Mind blown.

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poub
I’m using a lot Interface Builder to generate my Capuccino views using their
tool nib2cib.

Atlas is going to save me a lot of time.

Sure you can still edit the plist by hand or programatically but I don’t find
it more efficient neither easier.

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fuelfive
This is incredible, excellent work guys

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epall
So, when do we get to play with it??

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jli
I think this has some potential to allow more developers to publish a web app
with at least a decent looking ui. There are a lot of good backend developers
who happen to be bad at ui, this might allow more potential customers to view
the product instead of being horrified as soon as they saw the ui.

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pclark
wish sites would put a textual description below videos.

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10ren
A visual IDE in a browser. Very cool.

Is it fast/responsive enough to not be annoying? No demo yet.

And I wish they had a one-line pitch.

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rman666
Tried to get to it last nite and this morning. No luck. Is it the "slashdot"
effect, or is something else going on?

~~~
tlrobinson
Sorry about that. We're still in a hotel in Miami with shitty Internet. Will
be back in California tonight and everything should be smooth sailing after
that.

------
ktom
absolutely stunning!

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jacquesm
Borland cbuilder meets the web, very impressive.

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releasedatez
can't seem to get on right now.

~~~
poub
You can watch the video there:
<http://www.viddler.com/explore/boucher/videos/1/>

~~~
releasedatez
Thank you very much

