I've been playing with this tonight. I had absolutely no problem paying for the beta - I've paid Microsoft and Apple for betas and they need the cash a lot less than these guys.
That said, I wouldn't quite recommend it if you're on the fence or just want a quick intro to Cappuccino. It is a beta -- there are a lot of polish issues with the cocoa app, there are some bugs, and these are understandable. But the biggest problem of all is the total dearth of documentation. There is a class guide, there are some non-Atlas tutorials, and that's about it. So, for instance, my app template comes up by default with a menubar, but there's no obvious way I can see to remove or edit it. MainMenu.cib has no menu in it, so I can't even see how to make connections to it and there's nothing to read to find out.
It's definitely impressive -- that they've done this in JS and running in a browser is a little marvel. However, I'm pretty used to Xcode and Interface Builder, and in comparison it's really not there. Trying to work with multiple embedded split-views really highlighted the differences: it's tricky enough in IB, and proved almost impossible here. That they've achieved so much does mean that you're into uncanny valley territory; if it looks like a cocoa app, I want it to work like one too.
However, the things I could figure out how to do, worked well. I defined outlets and actions, hooked them up, and was basically thinking and coding exactly as I would in Cocoa and Objective-C. Nifty.
It has got a fair way to go, but I think they well might get there. If you're already working with Cappuccino and don't need documentation, it could well be worth your time.
Thanks for the feedback. Accurate assessment. This is definitely still too early to use for most people. We're not really trying to push the beta, we're just looking for dedicated users to help give us great feedback.
Congrats you guys on launching the beta. I've been following Cappuccino for a while and, while I'm still on the fence about it as a developer, it is certainly an impressive technical feat.
That said, I wouldn't quite recommend it if you're on the fence or just want a quick intro to Cappuccino. It is a beta -- there are a lot of polish issues with the cocoa app, there are some bugs, and these are understandable. But the biggest problem of all is the total dearth of documentation. There is a class guide, there are some non-Atlas tutorials, and that's about it. So, for instance, my app template comes up by default with a menubar, but there's no obvious way I can see to remove or edit it. MainMenu.cib has no menu in it, so I can't even see how to make connections to it and there's nothing to read to find out.
It's definitely impressive -- that they've done this in JS and running in a browser is a little marvel. However, I'm pretty used to Xcode and Interface Builder, and in comparison it's really not there. Trying to work with multiple embedded split-views really highlighted the differences: it's tricky enough in IB, and proved almost impossible here. That they've achieved so much does mean that you're into uncanny valley territory; if it looks like a cocoa app, I want it to work like one too.
However, the things I could figure out how to do, worked well. I defined outlets and actions, hooked them up, and was basically thinking and coding exactly as I would in Cocoa and Objective-C. Nifty.
It has got a fair way to go, but I think they well might get there. If you're already working with Cappuccino and don't need documentation, it could well be worth your time.