Monday, January 7, 2008

The next release of JumpShip is going to sport some pretty heavy architectural changes in order to bring it more in line with what seems to be developing as a standard way of implementing MVC. The reason for the changes are two-fold.

First, I think it's important to simplify the framework in order to encourage new developers to use it. And letting developers use the same basic approach with JumpShip as they may have encountered in other frameworks like Cairngorm or PureMVC is something I would put under the category of simplification.

Second, lazyness mainly. It will be easier to maintain the framework if JumpShip barrows as much as it can from all the other work being done in this space. Many other people have much stronger opinions on how best to implement MVC than I do.

My main goal has always been to lower the learning curve by taking lessons from folks outside of Flash or Java. Folks who are less interested in design pattern theory and are more interested in getting things done correctly, fast, and without thinking about too much.

JumpShip is more focused on the more practical side of development. Respectful of standards and best practices but not afraid to lay down some conventions that make development with the framework take less thought.

Ultimately I don't want the way JumpShip implements MVC to be a barrier, and in fact I'd like to get to the point where it's almost invisible to the developer who just wants to get their app up and running.

Jamie Scanlon