Ola Bini again, this time on language choices:
A good programmer uses his common sense to provide the best value possible. That includes choosing the best language for the job. If Ruby allows you to provide functionality 5 times faster than the equivalent functionality with Java, you need to think about whether this is acceptable or not. On the one hand, Java has IDEs that make maintainability easier, but with the Ruby codebase you will end up maintaining a fifth of the size of the Java code base. Is that trade off acceptable? In some cases yes, in some cases no.
I couldn't agree more.
Ola Bini on when to use def, define_method, inside our outside of eval:
Defining methods can be complicated in Ruby, and you absolutely need to know when to use which one of these variations. Try to avoid define_method unless you absolutely have to, and remember that def is available in more places than you might think.
Google Doctype contains dozens of articles written by top Googlers on topics important to all web developers: security, performance, caching, DOM manipulation, CSS styling, and more. It contains over 8,000 lines of JavaScript code: Google's own battle-tested JavaScript library, released today under a liberal open source license. And it contains the beginnings of a test-driven reference of the open web: a reference of every element, every attribute, every DOM method, every CSS property, all backed up by test cases.
Everything's editable by anyone with a Google account; sort of the Web developer's Wikipedia.
Last Thursday, I had a lot of fun talking about JRuby on Rails at the Düsseldorf Java User Group -- I had a great audience with smart questions and a topic I'm really excited about. As usual, I've put the slides online.
Excellent answer from Norm Walsh to Jeff Atwood's XML criticism:
I don't necessarily think all the alternatives to XML suck, but the mindless, knee-jerk rejection of XML because it contains a small amount of additional syntax certainly does. Like all tools, it's a question of how you use it. Please think twice before subjecting yourself, your fellow programmers, and your users to more fragile, ASCII-only, ad hoc syntaxes.
This is an occasion where I agree that both alternatives (XML and more light-weight approaches) are worth being considered.
Superb talk by Steve Yegge (judging from the transcript, at least). Be sure to check out the comments, too.
Martin Probst on all those “easy” blog apps:
Implementing a blog is writing a tiny handler that shoves stuff into the database and out of it, and then spending ridiculous amounts of time filtering comments for spam. Which is one of the really difficult things to do on the internet - validating users as real users, without being inaccessible.
Haben Sie es sich mit “Ihrer” Haus-und-Hof-Programmiersprache gemütlich gemacht? Vielleicht ist die Zeit gekommen, sich neu und breiter zu orientieren – glaubt man zumindest dem Tenor zahlreicher Blog-Postings, stehen wir vor der Zeit der “polyglotten Programmierer”.
Meine Kolumne im aktuellen JavaSPEKTRUM ist online.
Stu Charlton's take on the end of BEA as we know it.
Tim Bray, reporting from JavaOne:
Down in the big Java One trade-show, there was a “SOA village”, where all the vendors of SOAP/WSDL/WS-* technology were talking about Governance and Reliability and Integration and so on. “Village” is the word all right; a village left behind by history. It was kind of sad, actually. REST may not have won, but SOA-as-in-WSDL is in the middle of losing.
My second take-away, watching the presentations’ sample code: there was way too much of it. When you’ve been living in Ruby-land for a while, Java’s verbosity starts to hurt your eyes. In particular those constructors spilling across two or three lines, festooned with hideously-nested generics cruft; that’s just wrong.