software technology design
Normally I try and keep this blog focussed solely on technology. Recently, however I came across two great articles that show such a vast contrast that I just had to post links here:
Despite the vast differences in situation highlighted by the article, there is one commonality: the fear of the stigma of having less. Still, it seems like the people in article 1 perhaps should take a read of 2.
Beyond Compare is the only remaining application on Windows which I have not been able to find a suitable alternative for on Mac OSX. Applications like File Compare really don’t come anywhere close to the functionality of Beyond Compare.
That might be about to change now that I have come across Changes (Leopard only). I haven’t tried out this application yet, but the screenshots look promising. I’ve often wondered why:
Well hopefully I won’t even have to do 3, and Changes will be as awesome as Beyond Compare. I’ll post an update when I finally get a chance to put it through its paces.
So I am thoroughly enjoying reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, but at the same time I think this review by Tom Slee sums up the negatives of the book really well. The book is full of great insights, but some of the conclusions it seems to draw strike me as very optimistic or naive.
Meanwhile Google unveiled its Google App Engine service earlier this week. So far I’ve just done the tutorial and uploaded the “Hello World” app. I love the dashboard for the applications. Obviously I’d love to see Ruby support baked in, and if I had more time I certainly wouldn’t mind doing some Python hacking. It would be fun to throw up some situated software on that infrastructure, but clearly I wouldn’t think of putting anything of potential Business Value on it. It will be interesting to see how this drives the development of Heroku and other competing services.
The whole hoo-ha about the Campfire clone (that was subsequently pulled down) has been a big PR disaster for the “Don’t be Evil” PR Masters. Damned for releasing a blatant clone of an existing product and damned again for pulling it down.
And in a week that seemed to have had a lot of Web Application Hosting news, some interesting news about Rails deployments. Could Passenger finally make Rails deployments as easy as PHP? Here’s hoping.
Everyone knows that deploying Rails applications is a pain. Love the development process, hate all the work of deploying your app (not such a problem if you have your own servers, sure). One of the great things about Rails is you can really, really quickly develop some handy little webservice or webapp just for personal, or small scale use. Clay Shirky calls these kind of apps Situated Software. But unless you have a nice deployment environment all set up, you might as well forget it - deployment will be more of an issue than development.
Heroku makes this problem go away. Quickly code up your service in the browser, click a few buttons and your app/webservice is live. This evening I threw together a handy webservice and some client side scripts in next to no time.
Another handy use of Heroku? Helping mentor other people in the use of Rails:
Heroku + ( IM || Skype || Phone ) = Really simple and highly iterative collaborative development
So, to recap: Heroku rocks!
Worth checking out / under current investigation:
More details to follow.
So I’m finally finding the time to get working on the design of the Logic Colony website. I just intend to do some very public incremental development. Today was the first iteration if you like, where I spent about an hour just getting things together on the server and throwing some Javascript widgets on the page.
Is there a master plan? Not really. Well certainly not a top-down detailed plan. I do however, have some strong ideas/themes for what I want the site to become, but its more of a case of seeing where the process takes me. Given the limited time I will have to spend on the site, it’s definitely going to be a case of embracing constraints.
Photo by mat0s, used under a Creative Commons license with thanks.
A happy New Year to all of Logic Colony’s clients, both current and former, and to all readers of this blog.
With a bit of luck and a lot more time, we plan to roll out some interesting software in 2008. And of course, we will continue to help our clients fulfil their objectives.
The end of 2007 saw the publication of some interesting (controversial) blog posts and article. My two favourites:
If the Ruby community has lost a hacker of Zed’s calibre, then it’s our loss and a big one. Still, I can’t wait for his book to come out, and maybe I need to make some time into looking into Factor.
As for the closed source vs. open source software argument, I think Jaron has nailed this one on the head. It’s unfashionable to say it in many quarters, but a lot of (most?) open source software is just a poor imitation of innovative closed source software.
Update is a bit late, but this is worth noting. Previously I slated any technology that didn’t autoupdate its clock due for DST. I got to experience an ‘aha’ moment the next day or so, coming across all sorts of articles about people having been confused either by:
i. Technology that did not update itself for DST.
ii. Technology that did update itself.
With point ii, some users were not expecting their device to update itself and thus did a manual adjustment of their clocks on top of the automatic one. Cue lots of confusion.
So perhaps T-mobile/Nokia/whoever was responsible for my mobile phone not updating itself was making an optimised decision for a larger number of users.
Context is everything.
Of course, if all the client devices in question displayed a prompt informing the user that the clock had been automatically adjusted, point ii would never have been a problem. But expecting all mobile client devices to work in a sane way is just too much to hope for really.
So yesterday clocks in the UK went back 1 hour, due to Daylight Saving Time. Seeing as I own far too many pointless a few useful, life enhancing electronic devices which all have clock functionality this raised the annoying question: which of these devices is going to exhibhit the correct behaviour and just update itself?
I would expect all devices with a net connection to do the Right Thing. And there were successes: the Macs Just Worked(tm). I’m sure if I booted up a Windows box it would do the Right Thing. An old, unused Windows CE PDA cheerfully informed me that it had updated the time for DST. My latest shiny toy, the iPod Touch did the right thing. So far, so good.
So what let the side down? Why my trusty Nokia 6300 of course. The device I actually use as my alarm clock. I specifically ensured that I had activated the setting to automatically update the time. Did it update the time? Of course not, that would be far too simple. I’m curious who is to blame for this failure. Nokia? I find it hard to believe that the device doesn’t work correctly. Virgin/T-Mobile (network operator). This would seem more likely. Either way, whoever is to blame in the device/infrastructure chain needs to wake up. It’s 2007 - my goddamned mobile phone should be able to automagically adjust the time for DST.
As an aside, I’d also wonder whether my Nokia N800 is able to correctly adjust the time automatically for DST. But seeing as Nokia have had it for about 2 months now for repair, with no update as to what is going on with it, I’m kind of past caring. I suppose I should phone them up yet again tomorrow, but this time just ask for my money back. Did I mention, the iPod Touch correctly updated the time? Someone needs to raise their game.
Ola Blini and Charles Oliver Nutter set me straight about JRuby development and Sun’s involvement with the Ruby community.
I missed the memo, but Sun had already been promoting Rails at JavaOne. And they’ve even been sponsoring work on other Ruby implementations. In fact Charles’ comment is worth quoting in full on the blog:
1) JRuby is Ruby. Don’t think of it in terms of Java. We’ve bent over backwards to make it as compatible as possible, and continue to do so.
2) Don’t forget that Tom and I worked crazy hours on JRuby long before we ever came to Sun, and achieved our milestone of running Rails without any corporate backing. JRuby is not a Sun project; it’s a project Sun supports.
3) Ruby and Rails were everywhere at JavaOne. There was a tutorial on Ruby/RoR during the tutorial day that didn’t even get into Java or Java EE. The Ruby tooling in NetBeans had two talks and featured in two of the big keynotes. JRuby was featured in at least three different technical sessions. I demonstrated running and deploying Rails, both with WEBrick and into an app server, during the major technical general session.
4) Sun already has major internal projects running on Rails–both under Ruby and JRuby.Trust me, Rails is not just being contained…it’s being actively cultivated and vigorously supported.
There’s no reason to post FUD like this. You make unsubstantiated suppositions about a big scary Sun that’s trying to squash the Ruby/Rails community. You claim Sun is trying to “contain and control” Ruby and Rails. You claim JRuby is somehow less Ruby than Ruby. And all the while, here I am working 15 hours a day to support Ruby developers looking for another option, with Sun being nothing but supportive for our efforts.
Sun hired Tom and I. Sun is working to support a research grant for Koichi Sasada, the man behind Ruby 1.9’s VM. Sun donated a high-end server to the Ruby core team for 1.9 development. Sun shipped me and the other Rubinius developers to Denver for a code sprint. Sun promotes Ruby and JRuby at almost all developer events. At what point would you appreciate the efforts happening at Sun instead of fearing them?
Please get your facts straight, and stop spreading FUD. Sun believes in Rails and Ruby, or I wouldn’t be working here.
So it looks like I got this one pretty much all wrong.
Although Ola claiming that mongrel deployments aren’t “ready for the enterprise” raises my heckles no end. We’re using in an enterprise environment (whatever that means) already thanks, and it’s talk like that - FUD of its own variety - that make it hard to get Rails taken seriously within a much larger technology department where most of the expertise is either Java or .Net based.
As for my comments about Rails evangelism - they still stand, and I think there is a lot of work to be done. But by evangelism I don’t mean developer flamewars, or even evangelism aimed at developers. I mean educating relatively non-technical decision makers about how Rails deployments differ from the conventional approaches they might be used to, and how they are also feasible.