I guess the purpose of this tutorial is to show how simple couchDB is to use, but since I knew nothing about couchDB other than hearing raves about it from my local alpha geek, all this did was open my eyes to how astonishingly inconvenient it appears to be. Maybe it's just the shock of unfamiliar syntax?
This tutorial shows how to use CouchApps, a very specialized use-case. While CouchDB itself is fairly straightforward, CouchApps need a bit of ironing out still.
The unfamiliar syntax can be boiled down to this: a server-side Javascript framework for building web pages.
To decompose this buzzword-compliant sentence: CouchApps is an API of sorts that CouchDB has that allows you to extract data from the database and embed it into a template and send it to the browser as an HTML page. It runs in CouchDB itself and functions as an HTTP server (hence server-side), and it uses a JS framework to do its magic.
The framework allows you to embed CSS files, images and the like, and the directory structure shown in the post hints at what goes where.
This site is a test of the technology, but not really in the sweet-spot. The real use case for pure CouchDB applications is the p2p web, where your application code can be replicated from one database to another, along with the data. This means it's possible to build applications like Flickr or Twitter, without relying on any servers or intellectual property other than your own and your friends'.
this website could be done so much easier using plain HTML and PHP
I wonder how much of that is simply a question of familiarity. Also, it seems to me that this use case is probably a bit too simple to start gaining benefits from the infrastructure.
Sadly the first thing I thought when I saw the title was, "aww no pr0n?". Gives you an idea how that presentation affected my thoughts on couchdb unfortunately.
On the other hand I might just have an overwhelming desire to look at pr0n that rears its ugly head no matter where I'm looking.
