|
September 2007
September 16, 2007
What's behind the Sun-GSA tiff?
Interesting week for Sun Microsystems. They got a little cozier to Microsoft while closing a door on a rather large customer -- the US government.
The US General Service Administration's inspector general has been accusing Sun of overcharging on its contracts with the government. Austin Modine at the Reg says Sun has refuted the charge, but I think Austin means disputed, not refuted.
But Sun's defense directly attacks the GSA inspector general Brian Miller, characterizing him as biased against Sun and as filing reports that are "riddled with inaccuracies and conspicuous omissions of multiple known facts."
Now Sun has pulled out of its multiple awards schedule contract with the feds, which appears to be no small deal.
On the other hand Sun's become a Windows Server 2003 OEM, so I'm not sure how the week nets out.
Calendar summer won't be over for a few days, but Google's Summer of Code is at an end. Word is they're going to have another Summer next year. May I suggest the Northwest Passage Beachfront as a location?
Posted by Mike Swaine at 05:56 PM Permalink
|
September 09, 2007
How's that again?
Among the universal mysteries that I will never penetrate, headed by the inexplicable popularity of the Three Stooges, I must now add the baffling thinking behind Microsoft's young-programmer recruiting site Hey-Genius.
A sarcastic-sounding name, crude graphics, 1980s games, and a "Hey we're 'kewl'" style: who, exactly, is the target demographic, Butters Stotch? I don't even know how to make fun of it. It's just odd.
Speaking of kewl, my failure to follow Johnny Kewl's essays on Coherent Disintegration (or is it Coherent Diffusion?) is no mystery. Couple my limited Java skills with his fractured English, and there was no hope. Your takeaway may be greater.
Johnny's creation, a POJO Application server called Harbor that he says is "what the future of J2EE will look like" (see, this is Java-related) is now in Rev 4 beta.
Oh, and happy birthday, Butters. Microsoft has a website you should check out.
Posted by Mike Swaine at 07:11 PM Permalink
|
September 03, 2007
Java as a first language?
When James Gosling recently promoted Java as a first language, not everyone agreed.
What are the characteristics you'd like to see in the first language a student learns? The size of the tool set? The slope of the learning curve? Or something else?
The paradoxical feature of such debates is that they are invariably carried out by seasoned programmers. Maybe we should ask students who are currently getting exposed to their first programming language what their experience is like.
On the other hand, the concept of "first programming language" is a slippery one. In a world where any first grader might have a web site and scripting languages are so widespread, are there really any virgins any more?
Posted by Mike Swaine at 09:49 AM Permalink
|
|
