Lots of negative comments on HN, surprise surprise. Seems like an enormous amount of code, we should be happy it's now open source for others to use and learn from.
Most of the criticism is valid though, in this case. This is a genuinely poor UI framework.
1. This is extjs, like someone else was mentioning below.
2. Why would you supplant native HTML/CSS capabilities with shit like
new sap.ui.commons.TextView({
layoutData : new sap.ui.layout.GridData({
span : "L4 M6 S12"...
3. The problem is that the entire approach is outdated, and fairly slow and bloated on my machine. Coding with this is going to be as interesting as legacy Java and .Net "thick client" apps.
I think SAP deserves some praise for open sourcing some real work. Beyond that I agree with your critique, this framework is not going to make inroads in the larger web community.
However, keep in mind that this is an SAP tool geared towards the SAP ecosystem and it will ultimately be a pretty big deal within that space.
As an SAP developer I am happy to see any progress towards more modern practices and better technologies and SAPUI5 is, without a doubt, progress.
“Why would you supplant native HTML/CSS capabilities with sap.ui.commons.TextView”
Because “The DOM is a Mess”.
SAPUI5 works across devices desktop, tablet and smartphone. Thinks about browser regressions (removing or changing unspecified APIs), missing features (typically older browsers missing specific features), browser bugs and differences.
Using the Facade pattern, protects frameworks/libraries against those problems, the best example is the jQuery library.
Why would you supplant native DOM APIs with jQuery?
1. This is extjs, like someone else was mentioning below.
2. Why would you supplant native HTML/CSS capabilities with shit like new sap.ui.commons.TextView({ layoutData : new sap.ui.layout.GridData({ span : "L4 M6 S12"...
3. The problem is that the entire approach is outdated, and fairly slow and bloated on my machine. Coding with this is going to be as interesting as legacy Java and .Net "thick client" apps.