Comments on: Cairngorm: All the worst parts of Java

By: Alberto

Alberto — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:40:42 +0000

I agree with you jonr. Model2 /MVC pattern was an improvement over model 1 development with jsp, asp but has nothing to do now a days in a Flash client.

My expirience with model 2 frameworks in Java is huge i have developed with and tested a lot of them and what i can say is that kind of frameworks are very prone to errors because for building a simple page you have to touch and configure too many things.

Flex framework is clean enought to allow everybody build understandable applications.

By: Niko

Niko — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:33:15 +0000

I think opinions like this from seasoned Java guys should be required reading for anyone who has come to Flash from elsewhere, like a design background (myself included). The worst are the people who have come to Flash a looong time ago, seen it grow, and learned programming with Flash (myself included), and then get all excited about adding more and more architecture to Flash. I’m lucky to work with people who have been through this on Java, so they’re there to hit me on the head if I start to get tempted by shiny frameworks…

By: Jack

Jack — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:55:16 +0000

Another happy swiz user here. You can use it as much or as little as you want. Many conveniences, like being able to listen for an event anywhere in any class or mxml within the app.

By: Mario Arias

Mario Arias — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:39:09 +0000

I’m new to Flex development, but I have a strong background in Java (Spring, Struts, Stripes) and Action Based MVC frameworks

I think that impose a “Action Based MVC” framework in a RIA is a big error, must if is based on Struts.

Is necessary to understand that “Action Based MVC” are a great help (at least in the case of Stripes, Struts is a pain in the …) in a Request/Response scenario. But In a RIA scenario is shooting your self in the foot.

At this point I think that Flex is very competent presentation technology and you don’t need and extra layer of complexity. With a good knowledge of OOP, you’ll produce correct applications in Flex in no time.

The two things that I miss are the language: ActionScript is a nice language (and IntelliJ helps a lot), but some things are a bit odd; and a IoC container (Maybe I’ll pick Spring AS)

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:54:56 +0000

Thanks to all for the input, although I’m a little bummed that Jon has decided not to use Mate again (it was my favorite “on paper”). The following two comparisons favor it, but they’re probably already outdated…:
http://www.insideria.com/2008/12/frameworkquest-2008-introducti.html
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37043/flex-mvc-frameworks

I’m turned on by the apparent simplicity, especially compared to Cairngorm and PureMVC. Also, it seems that if I chose Mate and realized I’d made a mistake, it would be easier to switch because of the absence of framework code in the views, business logic, and server access.

But I will now check out the links you guys have posted.

By: Darren

Darren — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:40:12 +0000

Parsley seems to be coming along very well and the lead developer Jens seems very responsive in the Parsley forums.

RobotLegs is another framework which is built on solid OOP principles and is almost at 1.0:

http://shaun.boyblack.co.za/blog/2009/10/07/robotlegs-as3-v0-9-elasticchaos-broken-fixed-tidied-improved/

By: Ryan K

Ryan K — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:27:05 +0000

We are using swiz on are current project and really liking it. http://code.google.com/p/swizframework/

It is very lightweight and unobtrusive. With all the bad reviews on cairngorm why doesn’t Adobe take a hint a drop it? If Flex developers are ever forced into using a cairngorm I would rather go back to using plain HTML.

By: jonr

jonr — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:50:51 +0000

Thanks for the comment Allen. I completely agree!

By: jonr

jonr — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:50:25 +0000

Bucky,
Thanks for your comment. I think you summarize a common experience with Cairngorm and PureMVC well. I think it’s worth noting that Flex is very powerful on it’s own, and there not always a good reason to drag in an MVC framework (i.e. one can easily do MVC in Flex without any additional framework).
Thanks,
Jon

By: jonr

jonr — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:46:27 +0000

Hi Cease,
In some of my older posts, I went into more detail on the issues I see in Cairngorm. In this post, I was trying to give a high level summary to set the context for my thoughts about the recent Cairngorm news. You can find my older post here:
http://gorillajawn.com/wordpress/2007/05/29/cairngorm-framework-%E2%80%93-a-few-suggestions/
http://gorillajawn.com/wordpress/2007/05/21/cairngorm-%E2%80%93-flex-application-framework-my-initial-reactions/
Thanks for the comment,
Jon