September 2004 - Posts
Blue Pacific is the creator of a product called Turbine. I have been around Turbine since my Generator days when the two shared the same market space (along with others). Turbine is still going strong even with the loss of most of the others in that space and forever improving. Offering
PHP,
ASP.NET and ASP (Mono port would be great to see) versions the product also sports a markup language (like Flex etc) called Media Markup Language. Currently a simpler model to the Flex model but designed for different purposes,
it was a lot of fun to play with MML. The main man at Blue Pac, Jorge Diogo needs a blog !!!!
Via Sean, maybe its time the the whole red pill thing gets dropped :)
John Lam lists some books he is using to learn Python. He mentions Learning Python but already had Python in a Nutshell so traded it in, its a great book if you don't have the Nutshell book however and I would recommend it if your new to Python. My other personal fave is Python programming on Win32 by O'Reilly for some of the more advanced topics in coding Python for Win32. Mark Hammond one of the others is a big force in the Win32 world in Python and one of the ActiveState team.
Ceasar has been working hard on the MJS (JScript) compiler for Mono. He has ported the Rhino parser (Java) over to C# and has some great screen shots to show his progress. Still much work to be done and if I could ever find the cycles I would surely give him a hand. If you have some spare cycles, please join the efffort.
A working example of a managed code debugger written in C#, its for .NET 2.0 beta (and includes features such as edit and continue). Other than Microsofts debuggers you don't see many other debuggers and this example is great for anyone wanting to give it a go (me included :)
Thankyou for all your messages to me and Emma, the day was amazing and the honeymoon (Mexico) was a dream come true (I have some amazing sunrise shots that I am using for wall paper). Mexico is 10 hours away for us and due to delays and mess up's it took us 28 hours to get home....tired was not the word, still it was all a great, great time.
So before I return to the day job I can see whats gone on.
- Miguel on Avalon. Miguel has some comments on Avalon, Microsoft's Chris Anderson has some answers, Miguel has more comments on that (be sure to read in that order). Wesner's comments are well worth a read as well. I want to echo Miguels comment that the Avalon team are working really hard on this but I do feel that all input is a good thing.
- Security. Miguel I feel as a valid point that Click Once could be a security issue, I am not sure if taking it out is the answer, the idea is a great one but this is its greatest flaw. Prehaps the way the delivery method works will need addressing, prehaps as a single package from a single source and sighed, in that way no parts are delivery from various sources and it can be protected from being altered. Also prehaps the way the OS deals with Click Once, so that a user is fully aware of what they are installing and "things don't just get installed".
- Complexity. Right on the mark there, don't over complicate it. I fail to see why a 10 level chain makes any sense. Rather than double the current chain of say Winforms (5/6 deep) lets equal it or lessen it, don't complicate it further, lets call a button a button not 100 other things.
- Standards. This issue is not one that Avalon bears alone, all RIA suffer from this one. Does this make it right, no but Avalon could lead in the way is making as much use of standards as possible. I know that ASP.NET 2.0 is going to shine when it comes to standards, why would I want to swop to a system that does make use of standards (indeed corp policy may prevent me if standards are not used).
- Designer. While a valid point IMHO a mute one. Its very important that the issues above and those raised by others are addressed and that developers are happy that Avalon can do all they want. Macromedia Flex shipped with MXML before Macromedia Flex Builder shipped and the same should be the case for Avalon, lets get the system and syntax in working order but we throw a GUI out. The "Flash Killer" Wesner speaks off is the Avalon GUI builder code named Sparkle. Its too early in the day to call it a "Flash Killer" and I dislike such tags when clearly the breadth and scope of the tool is unknown. Hopefully it will bring to Avalon the ease of tools such as VS.NET WinForms, Macromedia Dreamweaver and indeed the animation aspects of tools such as Macromedia Flash/Director.
- Macromedia Flex info. Alistair and Steven are hard at work getting out loads of articles and info on Flex. I know they are presenting at MAX, well worth seeing them speak as they really are the Jedis of the Flex world. Just picked up (today in fact) a copy of their Flex book. as I have said in the past due to the very nature of Flex at the moment its got a J2EE slant to it but still well worth buying if your using .NET and Flex.
- Delphi 8.0 has a few issues with .NET 1.1 SP 1, Allen has a few tips on getting them playing nice (in his words this is a shotgun fix and your milage may vary).
- CAS in Mono continues to develop, lots of samples here and here.
- IronPython update, Edd has some news that Jim still has plans to get IronPython to 1.0 (the no news was worrying I must admit) but is still working on the details on the best way forward (and fitting that work with what he does at Microsoft). I have emailed Jim and shared some idea's on sharing what he has learnt from creating IronPython and as IronPython reaches 1.0 Jim feels that he will be in a great postion to begin sharing out the good, the bad and ugly to the developer community. As a bidding compiler writer I can't wait.
- Slashdot has a report on this university project to build a version of the CLR to run on Lego Mindstorms. At present the project is translating CLI to RCX but it looks like the end goal is to run the CLI on the RCX (and heck if SPOT can do it why not on the RCX). I do feel that if Microsoft released a version of the CLI that has been adapted for personal devices or SPOT etc in the same style as Rotor then more and more devices would be adapted and more and more research would done (you only have to look at the research that is done with Rotor to see what kind of work could go on). Would love to see a RSS feed on the blog.
More Posts