So you’re going to write an iPhone app… - about experiences with the (not yet available) iPhone SDK and software development for the iPhone.
programmierung - 26.7.2007 - 12.2.2008
CamlX - GUI shell for Ocaml and Caml Light (wow, that's ages ago, my tinkering with Caml Light - and the DOS port of Ocaml 1.0 ..)
FastCGI Programmer's Guide - Chapter 2, Developing FastCGI Applications in C - and yes, it does make sense from time to time to program your CGIs (or FCGIs) in C.
Tenerife Skunkworks: Parsing text and binary files with Erlang - nice article about one of the mysteries in Erlang: how to handle strings? Lists of characters or binaries? (oh, and everything I've written in the last few days is gone due to a server crash. Hmm. Did I have anything interesting to say?)
Developing an iPhoto export plugin - as the name suggests: how to build iPhoto exporters.
Programming Nu - mini-Lisp with integration in ObjectiveC on Mac OS X. Sounds quite interesting.
real programmers - use vim, dammit!
Arc - does anyone remember the fuss Paul Graham made about the 100-year-language? And that he wanted to achieve it with Arc? Well, he has scaled back: Arc is now just a language for exploratory programming. If you look at it, it looks like Common Lisp without the advanced features, with a more compact (but incompatible with other Lisp) syntax and some ready-made libraries to relatively easily put together a web application. Not really particularly exciting. There was already Picolisp for that - and if he is already based on MzScheme, one could simply use that, it has a much larger library and is used by more than just a few grumpy-old-men ... (and the excuse he gives for supporting only ASCII as a character set is simply embarrassing - especially since his underlying infrastructure cleanly supports Unicode ...)
Jython 2.5 - possibly still this year? That would be fantastic. Python is still my preferred language, and the JVM world opens up large amounts of interesting libraries (the interesting ones usually don't come from Sun ...) and interoperability with Java programs, which makes it easier to place Python at work.
#10919 (incorrect pluralization) - Rails Trac - over penis enhancements in Ruby on Rails
Valued Lessons: Monads in Python (with nice syntax!) - interesting approach using Python 2.5 bidirectional generators.
base2 - a library that smooths out JavaScript differences between browsers.
Dean Edwards: IE7.js version 2.0 (beta) - new version of the brilliant JavaScript library that turns IE into a somewhat compliant browser.
Django on Jython: Minding the Gap - wow. It's getting closer. And as a side effect, Jython will get closer to current Python. Cool!
More on widgets: When one e-mail is enough to break a system. - JavaScript widgets (e.g. Mac Dashboard, or Google Desktop or Yahoo Widgets) have the same security issues as regular websites. And presumably, people pay even less attention to programming with widgets than with websites. We are probably heading towards a new wave of exploits ...
Samba Team Receives Microsoft Protocol Docs - well, it works.
Run Python Script - Automator Action. Unfortunately only from 10.5, so I have to wait.
Amazon Web Services: SimpleDB - interesting service by Amazon, databases for structured and unstructured data via REST and SOAP. With the typical Amazon payment model for web services. Also interesting is the rumor that it was implemented with Erlang.
New version of Ready Lisp for Mac OS X available - anyone who wants to test Common Lisp in a typical work environment, this package makes it typically easy on a Mac. Simply download a DMG, put the bundle in the Applications folder and off you go. The package includes AquaMacs, Slime, and SBCL, which is quite decent. Unfortunately, it's only for 10.5 - so not usable for me.
Ajatus manifesto - a kind of CMS with a strong focus on decentralized content creation and replication. Built on JavaScript and CouchDB. However, it comes with "Manifesto" which for me is often synonymous with "gaga". But maybe useful software will come out of it after all.
Moonlight/Silverlight Unfug - "Novell's intention is not to compete with Flash, we only want to support Silverlight with Moonlight so that Linux users do not become 'second-class citizens' if Microsoft's technology is successful," emphasized Icaza. - the blabbermouth should think about the fact that he is doing nothing more than holding the ladder for Microsoft. After all, it is not yet clear whether the MS stuff will even catch on. Wouldn't be the first technology that MS messed up (their PDF alternative has been an absolute blockbuster so far). Why open-source programmers should pant and copy MS stuff before it is even relevant - a real mystery to me. False prestige? Too thin air in Novell's development department?
Programming CouchDB with Javascript - the typical ToDo list. Interesting to see how CouchDB is addressed.
NodeBox - Tool for playing with 2D graphics, based on Python. Reminds me a bit of Processing, but with Python instead of Java.
Clojure - interesting Lisp dialect that compiles directly to Java bytecode and integrates well with Java, but is conceptually more aligned with Erlang's ideas (no object orientation of its own, but a functional model as the basis, strong focus on parallelism) and makes extensive use of concepts from Common Lisp (macros, multimethods). Sounds very interesting.
Getting Started on Natural Language Processing with Python - nothing specific for me in the application, but processing natural language with computers has always fascinated me.
JLine - something like readline, but for Java.
lxml.html - Processing HTML in Python. Looks good.
reinteract - interesting interactive shell for Python with a nice idea for editing history. And a mode to integrate certain objects directly into the output - could be interesting as a math sheet. Or simply as a nice interface for playing with Python libraries.
Zope: Using UTF-8 in the Management Interface (ZMI) - because I needed it just now.
Cowboy Programming: Mature Optimization - Mature optimization is any optimization done early in development that you know in advance will provide a significant performance boost without unmanageable side effects. Mature optimizations are often well-known techniques that were successfully used before. Mature optimizations include small local modifications, coding standards, and architecture-level design decisions.
CL-OBJC project - Cocoa applications with sbcl or Allegro.
Hello, Bob. Hello Joe. - Bob Ippolito on Erlang development and his (good) experiences.
OOXML Payback Time as Global Standards Work in SC 34 "Grinds to a Halt" - hopefully ISO draws its conclusions from this and renovates its structure at that point. And kicks the buy votes out again.
Re: digitool MCL clozure OpenMCL - yay! MCL will soon be open source - only for PPC, but if the OpenMCL people bring their backends into it, it will soon be available for Intel as well. Would be very nice, even if it might only have historical significance.
Buy two OLPC notebooks, donate one - hey, why should the second device go to a child of the buyer? If the buyer wants one for themselves?
External Filters from Erlang - interesting post about managing a pool of external programs from Erlang and assigning tasks to them. All in OTP technology.
Mobile Processing - and here is the variant of Processing that creates applications for mobile Java devices (phones, etc.).
NASA World Wind in Processing - and here the two previous links combined. Call the navigable Earth from the interactive Java environment Processing.
Processing 1.0 (BETA) - interesting project that does with Java what you used to do with Logo - interactive graphics programming with a good set of simple libraries. And just like Logo back then, this is suitable for far more than just playing around. There are also books available.
World Wind JAVA SDK - the NASA alternative to Google Earth as an embeddable Java library.
BabelDjango - better i18n framework for Django. Looks quite nice and solves some of the problems I had with the gettext mess back when I developed the i18n stuff for Django.
Microsoft Allegedly Bullies and Bribes to Make Office an International Standard - about Microsoft's nice business practices.
The Shakespeare Programming Language - oh. shit. Someone definitely had too much time and too much beer.
Free ERP and CRM solution for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X - yeah, yeah, I know, ERP is boring and dull. But since I've been working in the field for 20 years, it's naturally interesting for me to see what open source solutions there are.
Amazon FPS, Amazon Flexible Payment Service - I didn't know about this one yet. A payment service as a web service for integration into your own systems. And it explicitly supports micro-payments through the aggregation of sub-cent payments. Sounds quite interesting. Specifically, the possibility of using Amazon account balances as an alternative to credit cards or bank accounts opens up completely new possibilities - and Amazon accounts are quite widespread. Does this whole thing already work internationally? It should actually.
Project Wonderland - a 3D world software under GPL by SUN. Client and server naturally in Java. Sounds very interesting from the approaches - content is currently only enabled via X3D importer.
Uh Oh. Another Smooth Move from Microsoft: Watch out, Ruby. Watch out OSI. - about the moral sellout that the OSI is currently engaged in. Sorry, but as long as a company like Microsoft so vehemently opposes a - certified! - Open Source license, you can't backdoor other things from them as a valuable contribution. But that has always been the essential difference between the Open Sourcers and the Free Software people. And also the reason why I sometimes prefer the perhaps somewhat fanatical statements of Richard Stallman over those of the so-called "pragmatists". Because they are ultimately only after money - and thus purchasable.
Stackless Python soll Eve Online schneller machen - as exciting as the software base is for me - as boring the game is for me. I've noticed again with Eve Online and Vendetta Online how incredibly boring space is for me. At least when it consists of zooming around in spaceships and trading. If someone ever makes such a game with the possibility to walk around on planets and create your own worlds, then I'm back on board.