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Content Tagged with languages + Opinion

COBOL has been in the news quite a lot recently and I have been reading that there are still huge amounts of COBOL code running and being written. This led me to wonder why this language was still being used. I therefore decided to look at a few sites about COBOL and see what they said was good about the language. The main benefits appeared to be that it is portable and self-documenting. Indeed‚ I often read about how COBOL programmers say that they can go to code written 10-15 years ago and still easily understand what is happening.

As I noted in my last post, the vision of what, exactly, Java was for when it was birthed in the mid '90s hasn't exactly synched up with its use in practice. The fact that Java ended up powering so many server-side apps, not the client applets that Sun imagined would be its natural market, can be chalked up to some combination of the language's natural flexibility and dumb luck. So, it's fair to ask similar questions about the embryonic JavaFX.

A list of programming and software development quotes by the likes of Larry Wall, Bill Gates, Edsger Dijkstra and Anonymous Code Monkey.

There’s a dangerous trap to fall into: The belief that functional code is automatically good code. Hopefully not too many people would come out and actually claim this, but it seems to be an unstated common belief.

Java's API documentation hasn't changed much since the mid-90s and it's starting to show. There are a lot of good reasons for the slow pace of change, but it certainly gets annoying. When we started developing JavaFX we set out to make some serious changes to the platform, and API documentation was part of that. The JavaFX SDK ships with a new documentation tool creatively named javafxdoc. My initial suggestion was AwesomeDocs 5000, but sadly that was turned down by the trademark lawyers. Despite the pedestrian name, however, it remains awesome. Go check it out here.

The long awaited date arrived, the JavaFx SDK (a preview as you probably know by now) was released on July 31st, I then jumped into the site to download it. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the SDK comes bundled with NetBeans 6.1 and it is supposed to work on Windows and OsX only, which means me and my Mandriva laptop would have to wait. Along comes Weiqi Gao demonstrating that is possible to run the OsX version on Linux, sadly the link to the zip file is not available due to some limit restriction, whatever, so I'm back into square one. Sure I could switch to Windows (why on earth would I want to do that on the first place?) and install NetBeans, but not being a NetBeans user (yet) I stayed away from that option.

Reading typical pro-Apple drivel is quite a common experience for anyone who frequents websites like Digg or Reddit, or the internet in generel. So no matter, I’m used to seeing and ignoring the irrational attacks Microsoft gets and the unconditional praise Apple is lavished with but on this case I have to reply, and kick some uninformed ass.

I expect a new language iteration to correct major flaws, reduce ambiguity in the specification, and make small tweaks to the language. ECMAScript 4 does this, but it also adds a type-system, new binding primitives, and a dozen other new features! What seems to have happened, is that the designers are attempting to turn ECMAScript into a language that is appropriate for larger scale programming.

JavaFX preview is just few days young. I just installed it and developed some simple applications to get a feeling, how it works.

Last week the satanic Dwemthy’s Array was released into the quiet, pious town of Java programming. { A, B } Both Java permutations used reflection to emulate some dynamic properties of the original, a recipe for sad exception handling if there ever was one. But it was helpful to be reminded of a few techniques to fight the clutter beast in Java code, even if defeating it is impossible. The crux of the Ruby original is probably that method_missing can make an array act as one of its elements, which is the sort of thing Ruby is good at. An interesting topic to explore! But the game itself is cool, and after seeing the comment # lettuce will build your strength and extra ruffage # will fly in the face of your opponent!! it became pretty impossible not to translate it into the house favorite language, Scala.

Today, Sun has finally decided to make good on their promise of JavaONE 2007 by making a pre-release of JavaFX available today. With this release, JavaFX finally becomes a little less vapor and a little more ware But the question remains, does JavaFX have what it will take to claim back the desktop in the face of stiff competition from the likes of Adobe and Microsoft? live up to the promise of taking back the desktop for Java.

What follows is a comment that I posted at Intel Research Blogs in response to a recent article by Anwar Ghuloum titled Unwelcome Advice. I was actually replying to another commenter, Falde, who is promoting Erlang for parallel programming. Since Erlang is back in the news lately, I felt it would be appropriate to let my readers know what I feel about the suitability of Erlang as a solution to the parallel programming problem.

Because it’s a completely different approach from the OO programming languages (even from the pure functional ones like Lisp or Haskell), it’s concurrent, stateless, has been battle tested in real large-scale industrial products, has an active web app centric community and finally, because it fits perfectly with our view of a light back-end delivery service engine.

This post examines the underlying factors that have brought the concept of multi-language programming to the forefront.

Both! Groovy is a fabulous language. Just read Groovy In Action and some of the other Groovy books. Just about every page brought a Wow response from this Java developer. And the Grails web stack builds on Groovy to provide a quick and powerful website building experience.

I have been following the Erlang By Example screencasts with Kevin Smith published by Pragmatic Programmers. Through the entire series to date (Episodes 1 through 5) I found myself engaged, interested and informed.

I like the Groovy concept of builders not only for providing a natural implementation of the builder pattern, but you can also look at builders as a way to create handy DSLs. Check out the SwingBuilder, the GraphicsBuilder or the Hibernate Criteria Builder to see how well targeted these DSLs can be.