Comments on: Joyent Smart Platform – a replacement for AppJet?

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:38:40 +0000

I ended up here while trying to find some alternatives to AppJet. I also would have paid for AppJet for sure!

I’ve been a web designer for about 6 years, and I have tons of experience with high level stuff, like building basic CRUD apps in various languages and frameworks. But as a designer I don’t have time to really learn an entire language. I was absolutely *pumped* to learn about AppJet.

I’ve started using Jaxer by Aptana, it’s really cool, but it seems like the project is dead. The forums are locked, and nothing’s been updated. It’s a shame because after watching the screencast I was pumped to start developing using it.

Joyent looks cool as well, but no information about deployment *not* on their cloud – I understand though.

So, there is a huge gap here. These projects we’re moving in the right direction, but seemed to get gobbled up by prospects of funding for other operations.

There isn’t much thats easy, AND easy to deploy. I don’t even think you can deploy appjet on shared hosting, or smart, or jaxer.

Something’s got to give soon and bring this type of development to the masses. It could be huge for all the designers with great ideas but no time to learn python or php or ruby, and learn how to setup servers, etc.

By: Notes on migrating an application from AppJet to Smart Platform « Jay by Jay Fresh

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:11:25 +0000

[...] about AppJet’s demise and the shoddy state of potential replacements, and got quite a nice response from Jim Pick at Joyent. I decided today to have a play with their new Smart Platform and had a go [...]

By: Jim Pick

Jim Pick — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:21:26 +0000

I definitely think Bespin could be hosted on it somehow. There probably needs to be some git interface somewhere. I’m not sure what Bespin does for saving – apparently they have hg support.

The app would probably require a natively-hosted git install somewhere with a little web API wrapped around it.

To be really nice, I’d like to see Smart adopt a provisioning API with OAuth for setting up new applications. That’s something I’ll be lobbying for on the roadmap.

By: Jonathan Lister

Jonathan Lister — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:01:35 +0000

Jim, thanks for your response.

Best thing you could do for me would be to help me figure out how Smart Platform can give me that one-page edit->save experience.

By: Jim Pick

Jim Pick — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:34:03 +0000

Looking forward to see what you do with the platform!

I’m new at Joyent, but without a doubt, the Smart Platform is the thing we are most excited about. People come to Joyent for our scaling expertise. This is why we care.

I love a quote by David Paul Young, our CEO: “if your architecture can’t get small, then you can’t get big”

What could be smaller than a JavaScript function? That’s why we love Smart!

Joyent serves billions of web requests a month, so this is a serious thing for us. Smart is definitely not going to go the way of AppJet. As a small, lean company, we are planning to happily undercut Amazon and Google on pricing, and stay profitable while doing it.