Re:BBC open source their "Glow" Javascript library
by flog on Wednesday July 08, 2009 @01:37PM
(#694269)
I'm a BBC World Wide employee, so the usual disclaimer applies: my opinion isn't that of my employer.
I've been a critic of the Glow library since I learnt about it, not because it's not good code (it is a solid enough framework), but because the javascript-library problem has been pretty much solved by now.
I think that in a large organisation such as the Beeb there's a big tendency to want to do things in-house so changes can be made to code-bases easily, there's a standardised way of implementing funcionality across the org, and it's "signed off" for use by management.
The "signed off" bit I think is the main advantage for the BBC developers, as the politics involved in getting external code installed (even JS) on servers is a very heavy workflow.
I've been a critic of the Glow library since I learnt about it, not because it's not good code (it is a solid enough framework), but because the javascript-library problem has been pretty much solved by now.
I think that in a large organisation such as the Beeb there's a big tendency to want to do things in-house so changes can be made to code-bases easily, there's a standardised way of implementing funcionality across the org, and it's "signed off" for use by management.
The "signed off" bit I think is the main advantage for the BBC developers, as the politics involved in getting external code installed (even JS) on servers is a very heavy workflow.