2007-07-11
Javascript on the Server
Running Javascript on the server seems to be gaining in popularity. Last year I wrote a small framework to test writing web applications in Javascript. Tony Garnock-Jones later extended this to support building continuation based web applications.
More recently, Peter Michaux has taken my original code and made a nicer web framework out of it.
John Resig has written a browser DOM emulation layer that allows jQuery and some other frameworks to be run server side. His example code looks very neat. Combining this with a decent Javascript based web framework would make for a interesting environment.
Steve Yegge has apparently ported Rails to Javascript. Hopefully this code will be released as open source someday.
Sun have a server side Javascript web application environment, Phobos.
Helma looks to be a mature Javascript web system too.
I wonder if Javascript usage outside the browser is reaching a 'tipping point' and is about to grow dramatically. It's an under-appreciated language and is very much like a protoype OO based Scheme with a Java-ish syntax. Ecmascript 4 is looking to be even more interesting.
