Why Objective-J Will Change the Game of Web Development

posted Sunday, June 08 at 02:15AM

Dan Grover of Wonder Warp Software (and maker of my favorite thought/scrap collector, ShoveBox) stopped by boomLabsSF today. We wandered over to Moscone West, grabbed some coffee, and retreated to the office to talk and hang out a bit. Somewhere during our talks he brought up 280 North, the makers of a pretty jaw-dropping web application called 280 Slides, currently in open beta. They're making waves, not only because of the amazing desktop-like user experience, but also the nuts and bolts driving it.

These guys effectively created an Objective-C clone for JavaScript. Additionally, they ported useful bits of Cocoa and created their own framework, wrapping it all up with the affectionate title "Cappuccino." Instead of writing HTML, they use Obj-J and Cappuccino. Instead of writing CSS, they use Obj-J and Cappuccino. Instead of writing JavaScript, they use Obj-J and Cappuccino. Call them crazy; call them geniuses—the verdict will be determined by the public by means of developer adoption once the sucker goes Open Source at http://objective-j.org/.

My personal opinion? I give it a big ol' HOO-RAH. These guys are trying to fill the same niche as Morfik. The methodology is slightly different, but the end game is the same: removing the mental overhead involved in writing applications for the web. Instead of worrying about the fact that IE doesn't support transparent PNGs, or that FireFox 2 doesn't support RGB transparency, the developer just relies on the framework to come up with the "working solution". It'll switch between SVG or VML. They've even figured out a way to overlay images on a running Flash movie! (Try it! Go to http://280slides.com/Editor/, embed a YouTube movie, then drag an image on top of it and hit "Present". I'm sure it's not technically difficult, but the fact that it's just "there" makes me happy.) I can't help but be impressed.

People will have their doubts. That much is apparent from the comments on an Ajaxian article published about them, but they're already proving the technology is viable with what I believe will be a successful product. If all goes well, Objective-J and Cappuccino will do for 280 North and 280 Slides what Ruby on Rails did for 37signals and Basecamp. $$$

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