Why not? Stick an HTTP cache (Varnish, Cloudflare, whatever) in front of it, and I see no reason not to do the preprocessing on the fly.
Also: "Harp apps run directly with the built-in web server, or exported to HTML, CSS & JS, putting you in full control of your production environment."
Not a solution to a problem I have* but I like the choice to carve out a new niche and experiment with a different mix of features made prominent in the web/app server.
* Unless my assumptions about the control over the caching of various template fragments and rendering work is wrong, which is totally possible.
This is a pretty similar idea to my project Slinky [0], and it's definitely a productive way to do single page development. Slinky adds source dependency management (a.js depends on b.coffee), a built in proxy, concatenation/minification for final deployment and some other treats.
We haven't changed. We are just launching our open source server / APF first, building a little more community around that and then we will launch Harp.io.
I'm curious: did you release the server first because the harp.io bits aren't quite ready yet? Or is building a community for the backend server intended to eventually drive customers to the hosted service?
Honestly, both. We are big believers in open source and creating more value then we can capture. This was true when we created PhoneGap, and still true today.
The Platform is not far off and we have people using it, we just want to apply a little more polish and make the experience exceptional.
Relevant: also check out Backlift (https://www.backlift.com/) -- it includes stuff like pre-processing and includes Dropbox integration + a backend + more.. A potential game changer in terms of dev time.
Maybe I'm missing something from a design/marketing perspective, but... am I mistaken in thinking that the ice cream imagery totally unrelated to everything else?
On the whole, though, I love the idea. Hope I get a chance to try it out.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 76.2 ms ] threadAlso: "Harp apps run directly with the built-in web server, or exported to HTML, CSS & JS, putting you in full control of your production environment."
It would reduce the number of differences between dev and production, for one.
Node + Varnish + (optionally) CDN is a very production-ready stack for serving static content.
* Unless my assumptions about the control over the caching of various template fragments and rendering work is wrong, which is totally possible.
(c.f. http://readystate4.com/2012/05/17/nginx-and-apache-rewrite-t...)
Cool thing none the less if you already develop with that exact tech stack.
[0] http://mwylde.github.io/slinky/
Weren't you originally supposed to be similar to site44? i.e. Static site hosting using dropbox.
Why the change?
The Platform is not far off and we have people using it, we just want to apply a little more polish and make the experience exceptional.
We have hung out with the Backlift guys - they are awesome.
On the whole, though, I love the idea. Hope I get a chance to try it out.