This post is one in a continuing series where we
internally debate the merits of the over-hyped promise
of AJAX…
Debugging Ajax Requests in Prototype:
How do we debug our Ajax applications? The Rails Weenie has taken the Ajax Responder feature in Prototype…
I’d like to remind Noel that the distance of the Atlantic
and business of the Christmas holidays are not going to
keep me from pointing out that AJAX is an immature and
dangerous platform to build a business on. Yes, I’m glad
that GMail is there… and I suppose the Yahoo! Mail beta.
However, these are fragile technologies to build upon.
How do we debug things written using the Prototype
framework?printf. I mean, I’m glad that with
AJAX and Rails I can whip something up quickly that “just
works.” However, it doesn’t “just have test cases,” or
“just get internationalized”, or “just stand up under
load.” They’re rapid-prototyping tools, certainly nothing
more. AJAX breaks usability standards, pushes data and
computation to an unreliable substrate (the client’s web
browser), and as the post above provides some evidence
for, there are no good debugging or tracing tools
available for developers working in heterogeneous browser
environments in Javascript.
So, Noel, riddle me this: why should developers be willing
to take eight steps backwards and be shafted with printf as their primary debugging tool when working with AJAX?
