I haven't kept up with the rich-client technologies as much as I should have, because I am apparently missing out on some really nifty technology. I was reading one of the several zillion articles on Longhorn's release into the wild when I happened upon this article about the new application architecture that will enable you to make a collection of markup pages into a coherent application. To be honest, I was fairly impressed. Then it dawned on me... Mozilla has been doing this for a while now with XUL. Embrace and extend at its finest.
One of the things that keeps me from really getting serious about writing some new code is the lack of a local database. I usually deploy to PostgreSQL or Oracle for production. Both of which I really have no interest in running on my development box. PGSQL requires cygwin, which is a pain all by itself and Oracle... oh gees. I was using HypersonicSQL, but it doesn't have sequences.
I noticed that SnipSnap used McKoi some time ago, but never really gave it much thought. I thought it was just another HSQL type database. Low and behold... McKoi has sequences. I now have a new development database. YEAH!
JetBrains has released the latest EAP build (#957) of IDEA. Everyone should download now. While you are at it, you should vote for IDEA in this poll. And in response to Matt's post about IDEA: Refactoring variable names, is in the exact same place in both applications (because Eclipse copied IDEA). Granted, the Tomcat integration will probably take some reading, but probably just as much as Eclipse. I am very disappointed in Matt's "trial". Honestly though, if you don't want to switch, then don't. But don't pretend to give a product a fair test and then say it stinks when you didn't even give it a try.
Ok, time for bed.
My line is so beating the heck out of your stupid line. Fear my pink line. You have no chance. I am the undisputed lord of virtual tennis. [Misses ball] Whoops.
Yesterday, I had a nifty idea. What if I created components out of jsp's? If I needed a textarea, then I would include a textarea.jsp. Now, before you start thinking, wow that is really dumb, there were about 5 other things that had to go with the textarea, or text , or select, or hidden form component, so it seemed like I was simplifying work. I came to the conclusion that I needed Nested-EL tags to do the trick. Unfortunately, no one has written Struts Nested-EL taglib. So, after a brief "conversation" on the struts-dev mailing list, I started writing classes.
After the second cut and paste I decided, there has to be a better way, and remembered that IDEA does file templates. So, I started reading up on how the templates worked and how to make variables. What do you know... IDEA uses Velocity for its templating engine. So, I started reading about how to use Velocity. After about 30 minutes I had two nice templates and I started kicking out 2-3 classes a minute. Pretty good since it was taking me 10-15 minutes per class the usual way. I finished up last night, and integrated this morning. It worked like a champ!
I ended up ditching the idea for a couple of reasons. It was taking forever to compile the jsps, there is a nasty bug in Struts Nested (all versions earlier than Oct 4) that doesn't let you do multiple includes and use nested:root, and I was afraid that the includes wouldn't be performant/scalable.
However, I think Velocity is pretty cool and I will definitely experiment with the idea of replacing JSP's with Velocity in the near future. Struts in Action has a small chapter about using Velocity with Struts, so I will check that out the next time I can catch my breath.
Anyway, I just wanted to give a thumbs up to my friends Struts and IDEA and one for my new friend Velocity. They really helped me out of a jam. I will finish up my Nested-EL tags. Hopefully someone will find it useful.
Joel's sudden interest in PHP has me wondering if a PHP version of FogBUGZ is in the future. I am very interested in FogBUGZ, mainly because of the support built in for capturing email. The fact that it connects to CVS is pretty nice too. I would definately consider buying FogBUGZ if it did not require a Windows server. I am a very big fan of Joel's methodologies (schedules, hiring, bug tracking) and it would be nice to have a tool that matched up with some of those methodologies.
JIRA is nice too. I wish it was tied a little more tightly with CVS. But JIRA does win points for being written in Java.
My kids purchased a GameCube last weekend. They saved up $100 over a couple of months (birthday money, lawn mowing, allowance) and decided they would put their money together and buy a GameCube. I dont' think I have ever been more proud. Anyway... My wife was very excited because she has been wanting to play Animal Crossing since she read about it a couple of months ago. Just to be sure we would enjoy it, we rented it first. I am sorry we did. My life is now ruined. Each day I am now obligated to running around shaking trees, digging holes and catching fish. Just the very idea that this is a game is funny to me. The fact that it is actually fun to play, well, take that however you wish :)
Carlos seems to be worried that JetBrains will give up all of their development-environment-ease-of-use secrets if they create a plugin for VS.Net. I see it more as a move to create an Embassy with .Net developers than anything else. Get them used to how development can be better with Alt-Enter, Alt-Insert and friends.
I think this is a great idea, because if I ever have to start writing C# (doubtful but one never knows) then I will definately want to have a tool that I am already familiar with. Like one of the poster's said on the Managability site, JetBrains is just dipping their toe into the water incase they need to jump all the way in later.
Heh, maybe they will put a short cut in, so from time to time when they hit F2 to get to the next error, it will lead them to microsoft.com :) If Carlos wanted to be really controversial, then he would have said that JetBrains was looking to be aquired by Microsoft.
I seriously doubt they are up for sale. They have already been a part of a larger company and left to start JetBrains. I doubt Borland could offer them enough money, since Borland now owns that "larger company". BEA wouldn't know a good deal if it kicked them in the face. Sun already has a development environment, not to mention another one coming soon.
No, I think the big houses are leaving JetBrains alone. I think they are allowing them to be the sand in the oyster shell of all IDEs hoping that they will all turn into pearls. But what happens when you put a diamond in an oyster shell?
Joshua has hit upon a theme that is near and dear to my heart. Taglibs that Web Designers can use. This is definately an interesting problem domain that almost no one is attempting to fix. Macromedia's Dreamweaver comes close to making this work. I think I will talk to my Web Designer friend Ed and see if there is any way I could help him.
I have been getting some really bizarro comments lately. One was definately spam and the other two had SOMETHING to do with the topic, but they were comments on entries that were made months ago. I am trying to figure out if it is some kind of Google spoofing or something that will drive up PageRank.
Either way, new policy. If your comment doesn't make sense or is on an entry over a couple of weeks old, I am going to delete it.