Articles by this author:Which Programming Language?
When you know a few programming languages, it's easier to analyze and pick up new ones. If you don't know anything about programming, where do you start? A recent thread on the editors list discusses what young people should look for, and how, when learning to program. Mar. 31, 2004
Magnets Versus PDAs
How well does your phone play with your PDA? Does your iPod coexist peacefully with your laptop? No, we're not talking about Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, USB, or Firewire. Instead, does a strong magnet on one device interfere with the sensitive electronics of another? A recent thread From the Editors List started with accessories. . . . Feb. 18, 2004
The Best of ONLamp 2003
This year, 2003, was a big one for ONLamp. With 200+ articles under our belt, what did we like best? Where are we going next year? Dec. 23, 2003
Myths Open Source Developers Tell Ourselves
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but is it effective or useful? Open source developers have the opportunity to learn from the successes and failures of other projects. Are we learning the right lessons, though? Dec. 11, 2003
Wireless Mail on the Road
The continued growth of free wireless hot spots, and the growth in popularity of wireless-capable devices, unlimited GPRS data plans, and GPRS-capable handsets, all with lots of Bluetooth glue in between, make it easy for an enterprising hacker to keep in touch. (Of course, you still have to get at your data, and in public places, security should be a primary concern.) A recent thread on the Editors List started as a paean to continual connectivity, and then the thread turned practical: Just how do wireless hackers read and write their mail on the road? Here's one ever-more-common scenario. Nov. 14, 2003
Paul Vixie on VeriSign
Paul Vixie discusses VeriSign's recent redirection of nonexistent URLs to an advertising page. Sep. 23, 2003
Return of the Self-Destructing DVD?
A few years after the ill-fated DivX player failed, media companies are again flirting with the idea of limited-use DVDs. This time, the pitch includes environmental concerns and convenience. Will it fly?
The Editors List is still dubious.
Sep. 18, 2003
Five Lessons Open Source Developers Should Learn from Extreme Programming
It may be harder to see how Extreme Programming (XP) can apply to open source projects, especially those without a formal customer. But to build a successful
open source project, you must solve many of the same problems you'd
face with an in-house project. Here chromatic, author of
Extreme Programming Pocket Guide, offers five lessons open source
developers can learn from XP. Aug. 28, 2003
Five Lessons You Should Learn from Extreme Programming
Extreme Programming (XP) is yet another popular idea gaining
press. It adapts the best ideas from the past
decades of software development. Whether or not you adopt XP, it's worth considering what XP teaches. chromatic, author of Extreme Programming Pocket Guide, offers
five lessons you should learn from Extreme
Programming. Jul. 31, 2003
Terence Spies on Identity-Based Encryption
Public key encryption has worked fairly well for decades, but its complexity has kept many people at bay. A new startup has revived a 20 year old idea that just may put encryption in the hands of the average user. Terence Spies, vice president of engineering at Voltage Security, recently spoke to us about Identity-Based Encryption. Jul. 17, 2003
An Interview with the Author of Practical mod_perl
Stas Bekman has maintained the mod_perl guide for ages. He's even been sponsored to work on improving mod_perl full time! The author of the recently released Practical mod_perl graciously agreed to this interview. Jul. 3, 2003
"Head First Java" Author Interview
Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates are the authors of the recently released Head First Java, a language tutorial unlike any other. In this interview, they explain their unique teaching style and how it works in practice. Jun. 18, 2003
Eight Questions for George Dyson
George Dyson is Director's Visitor of the Institute for Advanced Study and a historian. His OSCON keynote explores the pioneering work of John von Neumann, and others at the IAS, in computation and computational biology. He draws parallels between that world and modern open source development. We were fortunate enough to engage George in a brief conversation about his talk. Jun. 17, 2003
Nine Questions for Mitch Kapor
Mitch Kapor heads the Open Source Applications Foundation, the group behind Chandler. His OSCON keynote explores whether and how collaborative development can bring open source software to the desktop. Mitch kindly agreed to a short interview as a teaser for his talk. Jun. 16, 2003
What I Hate About Your Programming Language
Choosing a programming language is rarely ever as easy as making a list of features and choosing the best ones. Like programming, it can be messy and opinionated. Every language has its own philosophy, and whether that fits your own mind is often a matter of taste. May. 12, 2003
Apple and Linux: A Mutual Friendship?
Apple's been pretty friendly to the open source world lately. It distributes quite a bit of open source software, adapts existing projects and sponsors new ones. Apple has even lent hardware to significant projects, such as Perl 6.
Maybe the real test of Apple's patience and good citizenship is the Linux/PPC movement. What would motivate someone to put a GNU/Linux distribution on Apple hardware? Isn't Mac OS X Unix enough? May. 9, 2003
On DVD
Digital Video has been hot on the Editors List lately. With the spread of Mac OS X and apps like iDVD making DV recording affordable and easy, it seems like just a matter of time before a real consumer revolution takes place. A recent thread on the list sparked a different discussion, though. Does the increase in storage space make it worth considering publishing DVDs with books, or even as a stand-alone product? Feb. 1, 2003
Emmanuel Dreyfus Interview
A recent update of the NetBSD Mach and Darwin binary compatibility page left several people wondering if OS X apps now ran nearly-natively. Emmanuel Dreyfus, one of the leaders of the project, has graciously agreed to an interview. What's this binary compatibility and what does it mean? Jan. 9, 2003
Return of the Independent Game Developer?
How different are games from other potentially open source programs? The recent Independent Game Developers Conference lead chromatic to ask that very question. Find out what's happening in the game development world and why some people think independent developers are about to become very important. Dec. 26, 2002
Xopus: In-Browser XML Editing
While HTML has matured over the years, the basic form controls have stagnated. In particular, the TEXTAREA widget, used for everything from writing weblogs to updating Web sites, has not advanced since the early nineties. Jon Udell has long lamented this lack of innovation. A recent entry in his weblog, on the Xopus in-browser XML editor, precipitated this discussion on the editors list. Dec. 1, 2002
Are Rich Clients Taking Off or Tanking?
In the late 1990s, Netscape had an idea. Instead of writing applications for a particular operating system, write them to a Web browser. Given ubiquitous Internet availability and the presence of a known reliable middleware platform, people could work whenever and wherever they had a Web browser.
History reveals that the plan didn't quite work, as incompatibilities, monopolies, and other intangibles interfered. However, the idea never went away. The W3C eventually standardized a set of technologies that made dynamic HTML possible. Mozilla finally released an amazingly powerful and mutable browser suite. A few client-side plug-ins evolved into quick and easy UI components from annoying toys.
What follows is an email discussion between some of O'Reilly's editors. Nov. 1, 2002
Building Online Communities
It's easy to install and run a Web site or a mailing list. It's hard to run it well. The secret lies in understanding and adopting the best characteristics of several online communities. Oct. 21, 2002
An Introduction to Extreme Programming
When you look at it closely, Extreme Programming isn't really as extreme as it is logical. This introduction shows you the tenets of XP and its relationship to open source methods for writing software. May. 4, 2001
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Weblogs:
Introducing Parrot SDL
Parrot, the high performance virtual machine for dynamic languages such as Perl 6, has matured greatly in the past few months. The recent Leap Day release added support for objects. I've been writing bindings for SDL, the cross-platform multimedia library, and will present my results at the Portland (Oregon) Perl Mongers meeting of April 14th. Mar. 31, 2004
Unix and FOSS Still Power the Internet
Falko Timme's March 2004 survey of Internet e-mail servers reveals that Sendmail, Postfix, and Exim run over 70% of the 106,000+ mail servers surveyed. Keeping track of trends here would certainly be enlightening. Mar. 26, 2004
Bram Moolenaar's "Seven Habits of Effective Text Editing"
Just as a friend asks for advice on a text editor for programming, Nat Torkington sent along a link to vim creator Bram Moolenaar on effective text editing. Almost every vim trick I learn saves me much time and trouble later. Mar. 12, 2004
CIO Magazine on "The Myths of Open Source"
CIO.com has a good article about myths of open source in business. The anecdotes of several companies who use OSS successfully pepper the story very effectively. (Thanks to Dan York for the link.) Mar. 4, 2004
Wacky Ideas from ETech 2004, part four
ETech 2004 has come and gone, and others have captured its essense. Instead of competing with transcriptions and on-the-spot weblogs, I'm presenting one wacky idea for each day of the conference. Today, here's a wacky idea for social networking with working code. Feb. 17, 2004
Is .Net Microsoft's Exit Strategy for Windows?
Since I didn't finish the code for Wacky ETech idea #4 on the plane last night (long story!), I'll post it on Tuesday. In the meantime, Neil Davidson's denunciation of Mono and .GNU raise some interesting tangential points about the future of Windows. Maybe the real battleground for free software isn't the desktop after all. Feb. 13, 2004
Wacky Ideas from Etech, day three
Given the gentle clack of keyboards and the comforting hum of surge protectors, there's plenty of coverage already of tutorials, sessions, and presentations. Instead, this week, I'm writing up one wacky idea every day of ETech. It may be good. It may be bad. Someone may already be doing it. Still, it's wacky. Here's today's idea. Feb. 12, 2004
Wacky Ideas from ETech 2004, day two
Everybody has a story to tell. At ETech, most of those stories involve new ideas or new twists on existing ideas. Instead of summarizing talks that are already old news on dozens of weblogs elsewhere, I'm presenting one wacky new idea for every day of ETech. Today's idea: collecting data from an unmanaged, unstructured, but never unused corner of the Internet. Feb. 10, 2004
Wacky Ideas from ETech 2004, day one
One of the goals of ETech is to identify and to harness new ideas about creating and using technology. Instead of summarizing talks, posting photos, or playing the "who didn't link to who" game, I'll post a new wacky idea every day of the conference. Here's a wacky idea from day one. Feb. 10, 2004
Overpatterned and Overdesigned
Design patterns are tools, as are object orientation, debuggers, and UML. If you're a practical programmer, you're in the business of solving problems. A (good) carpenter wouldn't brag about pounding in a nail with a hammer, a prybar, a radial arm saw, and a plumb line. Why should a programmer try to use as many patterns as possible? Jan. 28, 2004
Improving the Metaphor of Software as Manufacturing
A discussion on Perl Monks asked the question "Is software development more engineering or craft?" Adrian Howard pointed to this 1992 article by Jack Reeves as an earlier argument for one side. Dec. 17, 2003
The Linux Game Server Rebellion?
Why should a game company release a Linux server for the game but not a Linux client? Why should a Linux user run a game server if he can't run the game? Oct. 22, 2003
Innovation in the Card Catalog
Moving library card catalogs to computers made many improvements possible. The fundamental mission of a card catalog didn't change, though. (A metaphor about finding information.) Oct. 9, 2003
Apache Wins the Web Server Wars!
Apache Week reports that the Apache web server's market share has recently reached 100%, give or take some statistical wobble... at least, if you plot it by domain name. Finally, something good comes from SiteFinder. Sep. 26, 2003
One Question Certification Tests for E-Mail Filter Authors
I'm normally skeptical of certification programs, but anyone who writes a program intended to scan and to respond to incoming e-mail should be required to pass a one question test before proceeding. Aug. 19, 2003
XGD: Extreme Programming for Game Developers
Is the game development industry starting to adopt Extreme Programming? Project Manager Thomas Demachy explains Extreme Game Development, a variant of XP. (Free Gamasutra registration required.) Aug. 13, 2003
The Fine Art of Complexity Management
Piers Cawley, Perl 6 summarizer and passionate advocate of good programming practices, suggests that hiding complexity behind simplicity is the mark of a master craftsman. Aug. 1, 2003
OSCON 2003, Day 5 and Final Thoughts
Now that I've had a chance to recuperate, here are my thoughts on Friday at OSCON and the conference as a whole. Jul. 16, 2003
OSCON 2003 Day 4
More talks, more parties, and some very strange items at the TPF auction. Jul. 11, 2003
OSCON 2003 Day Three
Sleep deprivation is setting in, but there are way too many parties and interesting conversations to miss. Here are the highlights of my Wednesday in downtown Portland. Jul. 10, 2003
OSCON 2003 Day Two
Tuesday featured tutorials again and then the States of the Unions talks. Here's what I think about the Ponie announcement. Jul. 9, 2003
OSCON 2003 Day One
Being a Portland resident, OSCON is just down the street this year. Here's what I saw and did Monday. You still have a couple of days to show up and have fun. Jul. 8, 2003
(Semi-)Official OSCON Wiki Online
Every conference I've been to has had a bulletin board for news and events. Why not put that online? If you're headed to OSCON 2003, drop by the OSCON wiki and find out how to get to the hotel, who's staying where, and what's going on. This is also a great place to keep up with talks, hallway meetings, and pub runs. A handful of Portland locals have already started filling in information for visitors; this is a great tool. Jun. 27, 2003
YAPC::NA 2003 Day Three
In which the hero becomes a movie star and learns of a few new modules. Jun. 19, 2003
YAPC::NA 2003 Day 2
Day Two of YAPC::NA was much like Day One. More talks, more odd conversations, and lots of learning. Jun. 18, 2003
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Books:
Extreme Programming Pocket Guide (O'Reilly)
July 2003
The Extreme Programming Pocket Guide covers XP assumptions, principles, events, artifacts, roles, and resources, and more. It concisely explains the relationships between the XP practices. If you want to adopt XP in stages, the Extreme Programming Pocket Guide will help you choose what to apply and when. Concise and easy to use, this handy pocket guide to XP is a must-have quick reference for anyone implementing a test-driven development environment. Running Weblogs with Slash (O'Reilly)
February 2002
Slash is the open-source software system that drives the hugely popular Slashdot web site and many others. Slash implements the kind of web site that has come to be called a "weblog": a moderated list, in reverse-chronological order, of timely items, with links to further discussion on-site, or to further information off-site. Anyone who wants to get a weblog site up and running will want to read Running Weblogs with Slash.
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