Would anyone be willing to explain when this is used? I'm a little confused, is this format for patch updates from the client to the server? If so, then I assume it's for NoSQL db's that have deep documents, so that you know what part of the document needs to be updated... do you currently have to send the entire document in a patch? Are there client side model libs that will track object changes and format output in this way for the patch request (the js libs listed on the page look pretty low level)? Or am I misunderstanding this entirely...
Vue is a framework that caught my eye a while back, and it's approach seemed like a nice compromise between backbone and angular. I haven't seen much published about it though, does anyone have experience working on a decent sized project with it, and if so how was the experience?
I made a file tagging system with node-webkit and Vue (+ gulp/browserify/partialify). Vue was a joy to use. Most of the complexity in the app was dealing with sqlite, Sequelize and many-to-many relationships. Once the data got into a Vue VM it was smooth sailing.
I did run into some performance problems (rendering huge lists into complex tables), but I was able to iron them out for the most part. The only downside, which is definitely not unique to Vue, was debugging--a ton of functions get called in the Vue code when model data changes, so it can be tricky to find the right combination of breakpoints to set to track down why what you're expecting to happen isn't happening.
The platform support argument is not very persuasive here. The beauty of open source and the community is that when you combine a popular service with common platforms that are likely to be used, it is likely someone in the community will release the needed api. Why not provide some community support for the platforms, but allow the users to release an api where they know their needs better than you do?
On the other hand, the security argument is quite strong. Improperly implemented SSL handshaking, especially when dealing with payment transactions like they do, has the potential to be devastating. But this is where interacting with the community that is making the api's would be key. There's a lot of value to be had when company and community development work together. They could contribute the ssl code themselves to the open source client projects.
