Hi, I found this answer(by andrew dupont) in quora to a question about the prototype library.
Question was What must Prototype JS do to become the library of choice?Edit Once Prototype JS was very popular until jQuery was released and became very popular. What are the things you feel Prototype JS must do in order to become the library of choice?. Answer by Andrew Dupont. I'm the co-maintainer of Prototype. I don't speak for Tobie (my fellow co-maintainer) or Sam (who created Prototype), but here's what I feel: In recent years, Prototype has been starved for development resources. Unlike jQuery, nobody's working on it full-time; I work on it more than anyone else, but I've got a full-time job as well. On one hand, we're genuinely out of new areas to tackle and are looking more toward a reimagining of the existing API than toward adding large new features; on the other hand, there's a definite lack of polish, and I hope to address that in subsequent releases. Where would I improve Prototype? Well, let's start with Keith's list. About half of it is stuff that we've got planned, whether for a 1.X version or for 2.0 (anything that affects backward-compatibilty must wait for 2.0). Some of it is being worked on (like the UI library — I'm building one for script.aculo.us 2.0). Some of it is a matter of opinion. Keith and I will have to disagree on the "trying to make JavaScript feel like Ruby" thing; the entire point of Prototype is that JavaScript and Ruby are so close in philosophy that we can borrow concepts from Ruby without having them feel tacked-on. And some of it, like the plugin ecosystem, is something we'd love to fix if we had the resources. Too often, open-source libraries are pitted against one another as though they were competitors in a marketplace. I honestly don't care who has the greatest "market share" — I care only that Prototype has enough mindshare to keep it viable (so that it can keep improving through patches, bug reports, and so on). So here's my answer: to become the "library of choice," we'd probably have to change so much about ourselves that we'd be unrecognizable. I'm not interested in doing that. If that means we're a niche library, so be it — we'll be a niche library with purpose. But do remember that the niches themselves are quite large. In terms of market share, jQuery "won" because it is genuinely good, easy to learn, and easy to drop into any environment. But market share is just one way of measuring impact. The Dojo guys are the revered badasses of the JavaScript community even though Dojo has never been a dominant toolkit. Dean Edwards has a statue in the JavaScript pantheon even though none of his toolkits have seen widespread adoption. It's a big world and there's room for all of us. You can read more about this question at http://www.quora.com/What-must-Prototype-JS-do-to-become-the-library-of-choice Felix On Mar 15, 9:58 pm, greg <[email protected]> wrote: > I don't often post here, but I've been using Prototype extensively for > the last 6 months. Not a day goes by when I don't say something to > myself along the lines of "Thank God for Prototype". Perhaps, had I > started with J-Query, I'd have said the same thing about it - but I > didn't, and I'd like to continue with Prototype. > > It could very well be the Prototype developers are: bored, busy, > broke, out of ideas, or any combination. Maybe instead of just saying > things like we'd like Prototype to be more popular and do more things > in less space, and be more relevant, etc, someone should create a wish- > list page, with a prominent 'Donate Here' button. I don't work for > free and don't expect others to either. (I just checked and > Prototype's web page does not have a donate button). > > Programmers all like a challenge, so if we as users can come up with > concrete wishes for Prototype then perhaps the developers will take up > the challenge. > > And, Thank God for Prototype! > > On Mar 14, 10:34 pm, Jason <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > I agree and would like to see Prototype start returning to the > > forefront as the powerful JS library it is -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Prototype & script.aculo.us" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/prototype-scriptaculous?hl=en.
