Lightweight Languages Blog

DabbleDB and Seaside

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 17:02:14 -0500

DabbleDB is a web based database that offers data refactoring and normalization in a way that you don't really have to know anything about refactoring or normalization. DabbleDB was authored by Avi Bryant, in Avi Bryant's celebrated webframework: Seaside.

Ruby and python list comprehension

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 00:23:54 -0500

If you've never heard about lambda ... move on, this article isn't for you.

Beyond old school AJAX

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 19:17:39 -0500

In day-to-day AJAX programming I rarely see AJAX in its original "old school" incarnation. Strictly speaking, AJAX stands for Asynchronous Java and XML - but in today's practice the XML part is definitely getting more rare. In this article I describe a few AJAX patterns I've come across: Original AJAX, AJAX with JSON, AJAX with HTML, and AJAX with dynamic javascript.

Screencast worth watching

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 22:57:12 -0500

If you're involved with a Rails project, you owe it to yourself to watch this screencast. Relevance LLC understands dynamic scaffolding and they've got an open source framework built on Rails to prove it.

What is web 2.0?

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 16:24:44 -0500

500 random people define Web 2.0

Testdriving �Streamlined� for Rails

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 00:17:09 -0500

This tutorial will assist you in personally test-driving the much anticipated Streamlined framework released earlier today.

CRUDdy analysis

Sat, 22 Jul 2006 12:01:56 -0500

Rails developer Scott Raymond was inspired by all the CRUD/REST talk and took the plung to re-factor his IconBuffet.com and then write-up his experience. His analysis has been celebrated as "The missing content from DHH's keynote".

Social scientist's ideas spread in Rails culture

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 23:35:15 -0500

Barry Schwartz is the author of "The Paradox of Choice" and a psychology professor at Swarthmore College. He recently gave a speech at Google and his ideas are spreading around the Rails circles. I believe his philosophy provides a lot of insight into some design principles used by 37 Signals in their web products - and of course the Rails framework itself.

Rails creator has data modeling opinion

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 19:45:19 -0500

I just finished watching David Heinemeier Hansson's (DHH) speech and reviewing his slides from Rails Conf. 2006. This speech isn't just entertaining, its essential study material. In this article I've collected all my study aids: DHH's video, his slides, and my humble take away message.

Microsoft? No thanks.

Wed, 03 May 2006 15:43:42 -0500

I cannot help but wonder why ANYONE, especially a developer, would stay loyal to Microsoft!

I've written about Inline::Java recently. This week, I had the DIS-pleasure of recompiling it on a Windows platform. The last time I compiled it, I got lucky and the whole process only took me about a day. The actual compiling of the module's parts that need to use C only takes about 20 seconds - it is getting everything that you need to compile on Windows that takes the other several hours. When I finally figured out what I needed, and gave up trying to use freely available compilers, I was able to snag a copy of Visual C++ 6.x...

Extremely Perl

Mon, 01 May 2006 13:18:19 -0500

I stumbled upon a great resource today. I work in the corporate world and the place I work is very sold on the whole extreme programming (XP) model.

The Future Is...?

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 14:16:39 -0500

We've got the old favorite, Perl which chugs along (and screams along under mod_perl). We also have
PHP, Java, Ruby, Python.

Now things are heating up with the "new" AJAX technologies. (Not actually "new",
but the widespread use is new). AJAX is behind many new, cool applications like gmail, flickr, digg, 30boxes, and the list goes on!

Coffee Talk

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 08:47:49 -0500

For reasons WAY beyond the scope of this blog, one of my current tasks at work is to create a Java interface for a large Perl application that we now are using. If it was up to me, I would stick with the Perl interface that already exists - but it isn't up to me.

Automated Web Site Testing

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 15:32:00 -0500

It seems to me that in the corporate world, where I work, there is a huge push for test-first development and for more testing of applications before they are shipped out the door. This is a good thing!