Category: Technology

Categories
Technology Weblogging

Tipping the Apple cart

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

There are some high profile folk in the technology and weblgging communities who are quitting Apple products: Mark Pilgrim, Cory Doctorow, and even Tim Bray is giving it a thought. Jason Kottke asks whether Apple should be worried. He wonders whether these acts could be a foretaste of what is to come:

Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this.

Is Kottke right? Are these men the canaries in the mine: harbingers of deep and serious times ahead for Jobs and company?

I doubt the average Mac user has heard of Mark Pilgrim, or Cory Doctorow, or even Tim Bray. Kottke’s point, reiterated by Tim O’Reilly, isn’t so much that, “Look here at these famous people, they’re leaving Apple” or even, “look, these are famous people”, as much as these were longtime fans of the Apple/Mac environment. If they, stalwart and heavily invested champions, are considering leaving, will Bob and Alice, Ted and Carol be far behind?

Yes, and no.

These gentlemen are also heavily invested in open source and open standards, which has and will continue to influence their decision. The average Apple customer, though, most likely doesn’t care about source or standards; no, not even when it impacts them. Lock-in? What is lock-in. Lock-in is having to make a choice and living with the consequences. Heck, the average consumer is used to having to make that crucial choice: VHS or BetaMax; iTunes or MP3; marry Paul or hold out for John; Macy’s or Gimble’s; Pepsi or Coke.

To the average consumer, lock-in is equivalent to competition and isn’t competition supposed to be a good thing? As for the average tech, he or she doesn’t know how to communicate the awfulness of lock-in—well, other than acts such as switching to Ubuntu.

But then, a geek switching to Linux isn’t necessarily a new thing.

“Hey, I’ve switched to Ubuntu.”

“I find I like the Brazilian coffee beans, myself.”

“No, Ubuntu is a form of Linux.”

“Linux? Weren’t you already using Linux? I thought all you geeks used Linux. What were you working with before?”

“A Mac.”

“Mac? As in Apple? With all the aqua stuff?”

“Yup.”

“Wow. Well, aren’t you precious. Little wittle command line scare the big bad geek?”

“Hey! I’ll have you know that the Mac operating system is built on BSD, a hipper version of Unix.”

“Yeah, but that’s like driving a Barracuda with an automatic transmission.”

Geeks leaving Apple for Ubuntu isn’t a Sign. Even famous geeks leaving Apple famously isn’t a Sign. Geeks leaving Mac for Linux is just another example of someone making a choice.

Now if Uncle—the man who can’t figure out how to use his toaster without burning PopTarts—leaves his Mac for a Linux box, well….next thing you know, Microsoft will replace Steve Ballmer with a black woman, and Sony will decide that art demands to be free.

In the meantime, my own Why Switch ad. Just tap the apple, wake up the worm.

Or, if you have time and bandwidth, the best version. Warning: Quicktime mov file, huge sucker. And one for your little iPod, too.

Quicktime 7 required

Categories
Web

The new Hello World

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Programmers have traditionally created as their first application in any language or environment the “Hello World” application. This is an application, small as possible, that outputs the words, “Hello World”. Wikipedia has a nice entry on Hello World, including the first known instance of using this now ubiquitous right of passage for programming.

The thing with “Hello World” is that it’s a small sentence, and thus isn’t the best of tests when trying out a content system, such as text editor, weblogging tool, and so on. Enter the Lorem Ipsum generator, the Hello World of writing. Wikipedia also has a nice entry on this.

Categories
JavaScript

Eclipse: beyond the geek

I’ve been spending time today with Eclipse, the popular development tool used primarily by Java developers. I’m using Eclipse in my J2EE development because there’s a plugin that enables EJB development for JBoss, and another plugin that enables web servlet development, and yet another that allows me to interface with a SQL Server database, and even a plugin to connect with Subversion. These are all professional development tools, more or less. Yet Eclipse is not just for the pros, or the geeks.

It’s easy to install, with installations for Unix, Linux, Mac, and Windows. I had to use gunzip and tar to unzip and expand the package for the Mac, because the machine I’m using is my older Mac; it doesn’t have the modern unzipping tools of the Tiger machines.

Once Eclipse is installed, then the fun begins. You can add any number of plugins.

 

For instance, if you work with JavaScript, there are several JS plugins, and even some Dojo-based AJAX plugins. Some of these may cost, others are free. One of the more popular is the Web Tools Plugin environment, which is free and sets your Eclipse up to develop almost anything web-related.

Eclipse was installed on my PC for work, but I wanted to explore the use of Eclipse as a tool for JavaScript developers. I installed it on my Powerbook, and then used the automated update and installation program built into Eclipse to add the Web Tools. How do you do this? You’re going to laugh, it’s so easy.

First, click the Help menu item, then Software Updates -> and then choose Find and Install. From the window that opens, click the Search for New Features to Install feature, and then click Next.

In the page that opens, there’s a box listing out what remote sites to check for new and updated software. I then click New Remote Site, and in the dialog box that opens, I added in:

Name: Web Tools

URL: http://download.eclipse.org/webtools/updates/

I clicked Finish and when given a new dialog with a list of features to install, checked the box next to the Web Tools option, and then clicked the Next button. Following, I’m asked to agree to the license terms, and from that point on, Eclipse not only downloads the tools, it also downloads all the pre-requisites needed for the tools to operate. That’s it — when it’s finished it asks to re-boot and when you’re finished, you’re ready to use the new functionality.

I created a new project by selecting File->New->Project->Other. From the list that opened, I just selected Simple, and then gave the project a name: test. Based on whatever project type is picked, Eclipse adds any supportive libraries and generated files, listed underneath the project name in the left pane.

I created a new JavaScript file by again selecting File->New->Other. From the dialog that opens, I clicked Web, and then selected JavaScript. Since I’m saving my creativity for my work, I again used the name test to name the JS file: test.js.

At this point, the new test.js file shows in the left pane, and the open file ready for edits is shown in the center panel. I type in whatever JavaScript I want. As I add new program objects, like variables, they show in the outline panel on the right. If I use a built-in object, like Math or document, when I type the period to access an object property or method, a popup window opens listing available options, and even the browser icon associated with the option.

 

When I’m ready to preview the functionality, I click the Preview tab that shows at the bottom of the center edit pane; the preview emulates a browser page.

Being a programmer I know that if one plugin is good, dozens are better. Shopping around, I installed Eclipse plugins for PHP (PHPeclipse), database access (DbEdit), and a CSS editor.

The latter was a commercial plugin from JointLogic, downloadable for trial for 30 days. Once installed (using the same procedure I used to install the Web Tools), I created a new CSS file using the same approach as I used with the JS file. I then began to add styles to the new stylesheet file, and as I added new elements, they would show in the outline pane in the right.

I also selected the CSS style view pallet for the plugin by selecting Window->Show View->Other and then selecting JointLogic Web Tools and then the CSS Styles. The view is listed as a tab in the bottom pane. When double clicking on an item in the outline view, such as the H1 header, a dialog opens giving options to define this type of HTML element.

 

After selecting the changes, and clicking OK, the edits are neatly added to the CSS document.

Eclipse isn’t an all in one tool, and wouldn’t be for folks who don’t like to tweak styles, HTML, or script. It requires a Java runtime environment, and it’s not small. But it is free, it is modular, and it isn’t just for geeks.

Thought you’d all enjoy a new toy to play with.

Categories
Programming Languages

Dabble

I agree with Sam Ruby: a successful tech is a diversified one. You can’t always depend on a new millennium to justify sticking with one and only one programming language.

This last week I worked with Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, and Ruby. I had been on a long hiatus from Java after the end of the dot-com era, but now I’m back and plan on sticking it out with the language. Yes, even unto J2EE.

I also agree with Michal Wallace: you are more likely to have an easier time getting work if you focus on .NET than Python. In some ways, I think that the interest in Ruby has slowed the interest in Python. Sure you can work with both languages: but why would you want to?

In St. Louis, the demand is for .NET (VB or C#) or Java. That’s it. I mean, that’s really it. Most of the other work in PHP or Python or Perl is off-shored.

When I move to the northwest, I imagine I’ll either need to get back into .NET or brush up my C++ skills, in addition to the Java. If one has up to date C++ skills, one can usually find work.

As for JavaScript — every web developer should be proficient in JS. Eventually you’re going to want to validate a field before sending it to the server, or have to muck with cookies. There will always be someone somewhere who will say, with breathless excitement, “What about AJAX?” JS is ubiquitous.

PHP is also ubiquitous, but there just isn’t the work for it. Nor Python. Perl’s fading. I have my eye on Ruby, though.

Categories
JavaScript RDF

We interrupt your regular thinking

I wrote a while back about putting RDF files out on Amazon’s S3 file storage. Why, I was asked. After all, I don’t have enough files, I have room on my server, and so on. Yup, I agreed. Other than S3 being nifty tech and wanting to be a cool kid, why would one want to use it?

One reason: it forces one to think differently about application development and data storage when you’re restricted to using web services rather than traditional file or database I/O to access the data.

Les Orchard wrote today about his S3 Wiki work:

One of the mind-bending concepts behind this whole thing for me is that both the documents and the authoring application are all resident on the S3 servers, loaded and run on the fly in a browser. The magic S3 lends is simple file I/O, taken for granted by applications in nearly every other development environment. Otherwise, JavaScript in a browser is a very capable system.

I agree that JavaScript in the browser is a very capable front end. Oh, I don’t agree with replacing Word with Ajax–why do we always see Office as the only killer app in the world and systems have to ‘replace’ it to be considered viable? But JavaScript in browsers, as we progress closer to true cross-browser compatibility, is a very powerful application development system.

However, the part that caught my interest specifically is what Les wrote about the data storage of his wiki application. He is spot on in that S3 changes how you think of I/O (Input/Output). It forces you to challenge your data storage assumptions–all the golden rules you’ve learned since you were knee high to a grasshopper. When you do, you get this sudden burst of ideas. It’s like biting into a SweeTarts candy–you’re not sure if you like the experience, but it sure gets your attention.

In my copious spare five minutes a week, I’m loading RDF into S3. I have an idea. It came to me in a burst. It made my face pucker.