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Firefox Jetpack Nears Launch
It could be said that for many developers, the only thing that stops them from developing Firefox add-ons is that XUL is just the ugliest language in the known universe. Didn’t anybody learn the lesson of XSLT? XML-based languages are just too ugly for human eyes.
But with Firefox Jetpack, developers now have the option to script Firefox using Javascript - a language that, while it may have it’s flaws - definitely contains a core of rich creamy coding goodness.
This is a slick move on Firefox’s part, too. Nothing drives adoption of a new technology like the feeling that it should be easy and fun to hack on - and nothing gives that feeling like a developer fiddling with an understandable chunk of code, in real-time, and making interesting results appear.
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Advice to students: Leap in and try things. If you succeed, you can have enormous influence. If you fail, you have still learned something, and your next attempt is sure to be better for it.
Advice to graduates: Do something you really enjoy doing. If it isn’t fun to get up in the morning and do your job or your school program, you’re in the wrong field.
"Brian Kernighan
Fake Fake Allen Pike.
Hey, neat - Fake Fake Allen Pike is just the sort of thing that I might write, if I had been beset by sudden brain damage. I wonder if that’s how other people feel when they’re… uh… mocked online by … what appears to be some sort of chimpanzee.
Friedisms
So, it looks like Jason Fried now has a Fake Jason Fried. I can only dream of one day being interesting enough to warrant a Fake Fake Allen Pike.I bootstrap everything. New business? Bootstrap. New product? Bootstrap. New relationship? Bootstrap. The only thing I don’t bootstrap is my boots. Actual bootstraps aren’t very agile.
Google Introduces Closure
Yesterday, Google introduced Closure, the Javascript development tools behind some of their most popular applications - the behemoths that are GMail, Google Docs, and Google Maps. This is not to be confused with Clojure, the Java-compatible Lisp dialect, or the functional programming concept of “Closures”, although the nomenclature is linked in all three - Lisp and JavaScript both support closures, and they are an effective and handy programming technique.
It’s exciting to see what people will do with access to some of Google’s thick-client Javascript tools.
Next Javascript Meetup
The second meetup of the Vancouver Javascript Development group will be on December 9th.
The first meetup was great - I delivered a presentation on thick-client Javascript development frameworks, like Sproutcore, Cappucino, and the Google Web Toolkit, and Brian, Brock, and Rob from Nitobi delivered a presentation on XUI for mobile web development.
The two presentations couldn’t have been more different. Mine covered high-level technical evaluations of huge frameworks for delivering large ‘desktop-like’ applications, whereas Nitobi’s ‘XUI’ framework could be much more effectively described as a very scaled-down jQuery for mobile development.
Developer turnout was pretty good. Everybody agreed that the libraries and techniques discussed were a bit high-level, and that in future meetups our presentations could comfortably go more technical.
For the next meetup, Joyent and Nitobi will be delivering presentations on Server-Side Javascript, and Offline Storage. We are also encouraging our members to deliver presentations on any Javascript technology that they are actively working on, or, better, developing.
"At any given time, there are only about ten or twenty places where hackers want to work, and if you aren’t one of them, you won’t just have fewer great hackers, you’ll have zero."
Paul Graham
GWT
- apike : I assumed GWT dealt poorly with things like thousands of elements or IE support, since they have Google Chrome Frame for Wave
- wildcard0 : oh ya. only microsoft fanboys report bugs to google. they're prefect.
- katep : I would say it's okay for quickly throwing together a shitty looking form
- katep : without touching a whole lot
- apike : Ha! They should put that on their website under testimonials
