Bookshelf updated

Jet lag has its uses. bookshelf updated.

Death of a soap opera

One day, I will write this book. I have removed it from my blog template because every day it reminds me that I haven't worked on it in ages and every day reminds me of how unlikely it will be that I get to it any time soon.

Some day.

Dynamic languages - catch the wave

I had the great privilege earlier this week to meet with some household names in the Java, Python, Jython, Perl, Groovy and XML worlds.

The meeting was instantiated by Tim Bray to talk about dynamic languages on the JVM.

I met Samuele Pedroni for the first time and had the pleasure of watching him step through some of the details of Jython's implementation at the whiteboard. I also now know more about how Groovy is implemented thanks to James Strachan. Dan Sugalski and Larry Wall's expositions of Perl internals and the Parrot VM were fascinating and at times, mind warping.

Obviously, I share Tim Bray's belief that dynamic languages are a hot area. There are literally dozens available for the JVM right now.

Obviously, I am biased in favour of Jython as a general purpose "glue" language for programming on the JVM. If you want to take my advice on board wholesale, get into Jython. If you don't want to go that far, get into *a* dynamic language for the JVM - any dynamic language is better than no dynamic language.

In my opinion, dynamic languages are the key to productivity, flexibility and evolvability of application-level programming on the JVM - especially in the integration space. (Psssssst: every time you use a JAR/CLASS you don't control, you have yourself an integration problem:-)

Do your Java productivity a favor - catch the wave.

PyPy

Congratulations to the PyPy folks on their funding from the EU.

I met with Samuele Pedroni of Jython fame for the first time face to face in California earler this week. (More on our Californian adventure in a subsequent post). Samuele is off to Sweden to work with the PyPy team in the new year. Best of luck Samuele!

McGrath's Musings

Audio versions of some of my ITWorld articles are now available on McGrath's Musings. We will be adding more columns soon.

Blog duellos anyone?

Via John Naughton comes a pointer to http://becker-posner-blog.com/ a site where two heavyweights of thought will duke it out. What a great idea!

We could do with this format here in geekdom. It could make for some very interesting blog reading.

Imagine...you hold a position diametrically opposite to someone elses on some tech issue, you "challenge" them to a blog duel. You sign up on the site that offers blog duelling for free. (Hey, they make their money charging the audience to watch you guys go at each other:-). You agree to be bound by a set of rules and agree that the moderator has the right to orchestrate the debate. You debate the issue in full view of blogspace....

Two participants. No muli-threading or noise such as that which gets in the way on mailing lists or usenet. None of the size restrictions that come with blog commenting systems.

Just a thought. If you think it is a terrible idea, challenge me to a duello :-)

The end of digital downloads

The end of digital downloads is this weeks ITWorld eBusiness in the Enterprise article.

Kick off a big download before you read it. The dulcet tones (to an oscilliscopes ear) of gigabytes whizzing through the aether will make for a suitable backdrop.

Sowa on Standards

John Sowa's Law of Standards is an interesting take on the standards landscape.