Going forward, going backward, changing

"The word 'progress' has such positive connotations doesn't it? Language can be such a tricky thing..."-- Going forward, going backward, changing

PyCon UK

The PyCon phenomenon comes to the UK : PyCon UK. Great. I will try to get over to that event.

Barcamp Dublin : slides and thoughts

Barcamp Dublin was a fun event. Great location (once you get inside the building), terrible WIFI (for *any* place - never mind for a Digital Hub) but a great space that gradually filled up with interesting people with interesting things to say and all sorts of synergising banter going on. Very high content to fluff ratio.

I had to head home to the metropolis of Sligo afterwards so I missed the pub bit which I'm sure would have been equally good - and probably had better WIFI.

Early on, Joe Drumgoole pointed to the smallest of the three meeting rooms and said something like "all of you who want to talk about Java and XML and whatnot, go in there". So, I grabbed the bull by the horns and ended up speaking first with a free slot that I was able to flow into after my official slot.

Time flew. Although my talk was mostly about Jython but - thanks to an interactive audience -strayed over much wider territory: Java, static typing, IDEs, Erlang/Shared Nothing, the GIL, Star Wars, Sun Hardware, Second Life Scripting, Mono, Rails, IronPython, Agile Development, Web 2.0...

The slides only dimly reflect what we talked about but here they are : in OpenOffice format and PDF format.

Some items I noted

• Atom was not mentioned even once. Never. I don't know if that is because RSS is the collective noun for syndication formats or because nobody there has Atom on their radar or becuase it just never came up.
  
• The word "Ruby" was never mentioned on its own. The Teutonic noun Rubyonrails was always used. The more I hear about it, the more I think "Lotus Notes done right". By contrast, TurboGears and Django when mentioned were always distinct from Python the language and there were many references to Python that had nothing to do with RAD for database-oriented webapps.
  
• There is a sense in the blogging community that there will be a lot of social media usage surrounding the upcoming Election that may awaken mainstream consciousness to the power/implications of all this Web 2.0 geeky mullarky.
  

Finally, did I mention that the WIFI was terrible?

Python Meetup in London

Simon Brunning has organised a snap Python meetup for Wednesday 25th. Great! I will head straight to the Porterhouse when I get back down from the publishing 2.0 event in Bletchley.

The guts of OLPC tech

Thanks to John Heffernan for this Google video link.

The bearded Dutch guy who does the intro looks vaguely familiar :-)

The web and the word processor

"The missing piece is that the Web has no concept of a 'collection of small documents that can be edited/browsed/searched as a unit'." -- The web and the word processor

Dynamic Languages at JavaOne

There will be a BOF for Dynamic Languages at this years JavaOne.

Session ID: BOF-2958
Session Title: Dynamic Scripting Languages BOF
Track: Java SE
Room: Gateway 102/103
Date: 09-MAY-07
Start Time: 21:55

Abstract for this BOF:

Java 6 introduces native support for dynamic scripting languages (JSR 223, scripting languages and Java technology.) This BOF session brings together leaders, users, and critics from the Jython, Groovy, PHP, Ruby, and many other scripting camps for an exchange of ideas to develop a common understanding of the state of the art and practical examples of using dynamic scripting languages to solve problems.

I really must get to one of these JavaOne events. The year-on-year increase in interest in dynamic languages continues apace. This year is probably out of the question. Perhaps next year...