At his OSCON keynote in Portland this week Robert Pike, Google Distinguished Engineer, talked about why he thinks Java and C++ are getting to be to complex. So what is Google’s response? GO…A new language that is supposed to offer the speed and performance of C++ and Java and easy of development of Python or Ruby. For more of the detail on the Language check out this Infoworld. You can see the keynote here and some commentary from Infoworld here. I have programmed in C++ and also Java. I have to agree. I have recently been converted from Perl to Python and find them both really quick and easy to program in. So if Go can do what they have set as a goal then we should end up with an awesome performance and short development times.
web development
Google shakes things up and the aftershocks keep happening…
Last week’s Google I/O conference was really impressive, if you are a developer using Google Tools that is. They announced a bunch of new features in Android 2.2. Not the least of these, and the one I am most excited for, Tethering on all android devices for free and out of the box. They released Google TV, which is there attempt to bring searching for video’s on the internet on your TV to my Mom and Grandma. So Google has proven that they aren’t evil when they keep all of our search data for ever. They actually use it to figure out what it is that we all really want and need right?
They certainly seem to. Google’s biggest and most reverberating announcement of the week is the open sourcing of their recently purchased Video Codec. They have packaged it into what they are calling WebM. The VP8 codec isn’t really the best of bread but it does seem to be the one with the least amount of problems with patents. This is really yet to be seen. Google has the money to take on anyone who wants to try and stop them. The long term fear about Video Patents, as I have heard on just about every podcast and website lately, is that you will get sued for something you never would have thought was patented. This is the excuse many companies have used not to adopt OGG Theora. HTML 5 needs a standard for video and Google is doing everything they can to make VP8 that standard.
If adopted this would open a flood gate for companies of all sizes to do more online demos of products and services. in theory you would be able to create one website for all platforms and have the video show up in different sizes with nearly no effort and only the hosting cost on your part. I can see all of the future internet infomercial stars getting ready to sell us all great stuff. Combine this with Google TV and I can finally kick caffeine to the curb and actually sleep at night because I will have the ability to look them up whenever I want. There will no longer be a worry of missing the latest must have gadgets that are sweeping the nation.
I would link to a story or two but there are so many good ones I think it’s better to just search for “google webm” or “google vp8”
We don’t need no stinking expensive IDE Solutions….
I came across an article over on the Gaurdian talking about the real lack of need to the larger more established solutions. When you start developing on Linux or FreeBSD the points in the article ring even clearer. Even if you are developing Java applications whether you should use the free eclipse solution or a packaged eclipse solution like IBM’s RSA or RAD or the much cheaper MyEclipse‘s cheaper but still costing solution. If you want to save your company money take just a little bit of time and something to develop and look at the many free and open source options available.
How do you do web development correctly?
I support web development for a living and here are my thoughts about what you need to do it right. After almost 15 years of supporting pesky developers I have learned a few things. In this article I try to help you understand what you should plan to have and do. Check out and participate in our discussion about the proper setup of web development environments. Let us know how whether or not you agree with our thoughts in this post. The story is right here.
linuxinstall.net 