Related link: http://www.agiledeveloper.com/articles/PrinciplesForCoding.pdf

I recently listened to an audio CD from William Zinsser. It is his narration of “On Writing Well.” In it he
talks about and provides some solid advice on how to write a non-fiction. He presents four simple principles
to make an effective writing: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.

While I listened to the tape my mind, as usual, drifted off to think about coding. It occurred to me how
relevant these principles are not just to writing but to coding, that one act that we as programmers perform
several hours a day.

Mr. Zinsser is specifically talking about writing books, articles and memoirs. It is true that coding is
different from writing an article. However, there are similarities as well. In both we are expressing our
ideas in written form. … more on this at http://www.agiledeveloper.com/articles/PrinciplesForCoding.pdf.

What’s your though on coding well?

Related link: http://www.agiledeveloper.com

Greetings. Many thanks to O’Reilly for giving me an opportunity to be part of their weblog.

Lot’s of Geronimo FUD going around these days. I’m here to tell you that a J2EE application server under the Apache Software License will be a welcome addition. And, I’m not huge multinational corporation here, I’m an independent developer who just prefers a BSD-style license.

Sean Gallagher’s blog talks about Geronimo’s impeding impact on the Java community, and he specifically talks about how Geronimo will negatively impact Sun, ruin the market for proprietary app servers, and allow companies to corrupt J2EE. I’ll paraphrase, “Geronimo is going to ruin everything because it isn’t LGPL. Sun will lose control of J2EE because Geronimo is an end-run around the JCP”.

First, I have to compliment Steve Gallagher on his mastery of the “barbarians at the gates” writing style. I’ve never seen J2EE application servers put in a more dramatic light. What scares me about a publication like eWeek is that it is essentially the opposite of what I like to see in a publication. Instead of in-depth analysis, you get the following digestable snippets of industry-talk. Or, as in this article, oddly uninformed scare tactics in a magazine geared towards technology management. In “The Geronimo Effect” Gallagher writes:

“Sun (and perhaps the Java community at large) faces an even bigger problem post-Geronimo. If Geronimo becomes the de facto reference implementation, theoretically companies could use the ASF to do an end run around the JCP with new features—donating significant pieces of code that could break compatibility with the JCP-blessed version. How will Sun, or anyone else for that matter, be able to preserve compatibility once the J2EE genie is out of the bottle?”

Exactly how would company X do an “end-run” around the JCP. He said this: “Theoretically” companies could “use” the ASF to do an “end run” around the JCP with new features. There are two things that Steve does not understand - the ASF and the JCP. Geronimo wouldn’t be able to call itself a “J2EE” application server if it wasn’t compliant. In fact, Apache and JBoss hold seats on the JCP Executive Committee; in other words, both organizations believe in the JCP.

Moving beyond the misunderstanding of the JCP, let’s take a look at the “using the ASF” idea. First, the ASF is made up of hundreds of volunteers flung about the globe. There is little “using” going on. When a company does appear to be “using” the ASF, they are usually scolded and told to stop. One of the exit criteria from Apache Incubator is:

“The project is not highly dependent on any single contributor (there’s at least 3 legally independent committers and there is no single company or entity that is vital to the success of the project)” - from this incubator policy

Clearly, someone is trying to poison the well for Geronimo. Maybe, we should just let it compete on merit before we start summoning the thunderclouds of doom.

Do you wake up in the middle of the night screaming at the thought of this impending “Geronimo Effect”? Or, do you think JBoss is using industry mags to scare people away from Geronimo?

Related link: http://www.konfabulator.com

Those in the widget development community would have to have been living in a hole for the past 6 months not to have seen all the upset over Konfabulator and Apple’s new Dashboard feature in OS X. While I don’t take either side on the issue, that’s up to the evangelists, it is interesting to see that Konfabulator is definitely not sitting quietly and giving up on it’s hard-earned user base.

Konfabulator’s response to Apple’s development of Dashboard is to hit where it tends to hurt by pitching in the cross-platform development card. Konfabulator is now available on Window’s and the idea is that all those useful widgets that you playfully created for your Mac can now be used when you absolutely have to use Windows or even shared with your Windows mates to help them out with their Mac envy.

So what does this mean for us developers? Well, maybe not too much. We can still develop our gadgets/widgets for either Dashboard or Konfabulator. Since the types of software people tend to encapsulate in a widget are pretty simple, any porting activity might not be as big a hassle as you might think. But who wants to port when one widget/gadget platform can offer “write once, run anywhere”? It’s nice that Dashboard offers neat integration features into the Mac OS itself, but is that enough to make you write that quick gadget/widget using Dashboard when you could choose another route and immediately get support for the ‘market dominant’ OS for free. Time will tell.

To be honest, I don’t have a strong bias either way. I’m a Mac user by heart and a Windows user by job. I also develop on average a widget a month for Konfabulator to make my job easier and life a bit more fun. Yep, I’ve got annoyed at times with the resource hungry Konfabulator and also yes, I am looking forward to Dashboard, but I’m also a lazy software developer who hates writing stuff twice so cross-platform support really appeals. In conclusion, I guess I’ll just end up opting for one or the other based on ease of development as that’s the key to developing widgets/gadgets in the first place.

What do you think about Konfabulator going cross-platform? Will it put you off developing for Dashboard or is it not that important because widgets/gadgets are simply not that big a deal anyway?

Related link: http://www.mobilescout.org

MobileScout - “A Mobile Phone and Web Public Art Project by Julian Bleecker, Scott Paterson and Marina Zurkow” is an interesting website. It took me some time to figure it out, but it is essentially just a collection of observations in the form of voice mails. You can call the phone number, walk through the playful voice prompts, and leave an voice message (observation) on your surroundings. Try it.

MobileScout also reminds me of the Sonic Memorial. The Sonic Memorial was this phone number that people could call in and record what happened to them on 9/11 in NYC. You may have heard the NPR story on this in 2002, if you haven’t seen this site yet, you should. It is another (much more serious) use of the same technology.

Related link: http://www.ipodder.org

Random snippets and thoughts from Bloggercon III’s podcasting session.

• What is podcasting?
• Everyone uses macs here.
• Everyone’s laptops have clean screens. It’s embarassing to be here with my windows xp laptop, with its three-months-of-grime on the screen.
• Adam Curry on programming. Adam Curry on programming– “I went out to google and typed ‘RSS Applescript’. And it came back with all these great examples. The entire program is copy/paste.”
• How do you create the program you want if you’re not a programmer? You seed the system by writing a crappy program. “Asking developers to make something for you is like asking them to do your homework. It just doesn’t work.” But sending out a crappy program and then setting up a mailing list worked
• Kinda reminiscent of
  Jason Hunter’s open source talk at SDForum

• Lots of people do podcasting. What’s Evil Genius Chronicles?
• The guy who does Evil Genius Chronicles wants to make it more like This American Life. I know what he means, but it sounds funny.
• Adam Curry has now said it four times so it must be important: podcasting is about recreating the early days of radio– low barriers to entry and personal connection.
• “It hit the resonant energy and everything vibrated” (but they need more dilutium crystals?)
• Another podcast: The Gillmor Gang
• Interesting comment: “The iPod Platform”– that’s a cool phrase.
• Downloads outnumber streaming by 2 to 1 for mp3.
• Gillmor Gang will never do transcripts because they want people to listen? That seems rude.
• Next step in Gillmor Gang: tag feeds with Metadata.
• “I see the blogosphere as metadata for the podosphere”– basically, blogs will provide commentary on podcasts (and that’s the tie to search engines)
• Greg Stein just walked in. Doug Kaye is here. Doc Searls is Here. Nick Bradbury is here. Wow.
• “Non RIAA music”– music you can play without too much hassle. There’s a tie in to the creative commons here.
• Adam Curry sells albums on his podcast?
• Adam Curry is talking about replacing the entire music industry distribution infrastructure. Kinda cool.
• Where’s the long tail in this?
• Lots of talk about relationships between podcasters and their listeners. Is there a FOAF thing here?
• More importantly, is there a role for reputation systems and recommendation systems here.
• Dave Winer: “The New York Times will be a weblog someday.” Yes, for the right definitions of “The New York Times” and “weblog.”
• Big important point from Dave. Podcasting growing much faster than blogging, because it bootstraps off blogging (the early bloggers didn’t have a publicity mechanism).
• Adam Curry announces song times. Since it’s not live, you can skip songs that you don’t want to hear (requires me to pay attention; is his podcast “lean forward” or “lean back”)
• EarningsCast. A podcast for all the quarterly earnings statements from big companies.
• With podcasts, there are an infinite number of stations? How will we overcome the noise?
• Kieran uses podcasts to replace lame sounds in video games. Grand Theft Auto with Vegan Talk Radio.
• David Marks from Loomia should have come to this.
• “Blogging is an uncensored letter to the editor sort of thing” leads to “Podcasting is sort of like Howard Stern without the FCC”
• Clear need for podcasting software that allows listeners to comment on podcasts, and for other listeners to remix podcasts. Shades of Saffo.
• Need for standards and a way for people develop software on players.
• Next speaker is talking about large number of platforms. Do we need for a PodVM (like the Java VM)?
• Mike Lemon has a podcast. Wants all podcasts to have an RSS feed.
• Apparently John Dvorak has an opinion on podcasting.
• Quoting Dvorak– “Will this podcasting idea take off? It’s essentially the newest form of push technology. While moving audio streams over the Net and onto portable devices is not a new idea, podcasting does stand a chance of becoming popular. The first thing that has to happen, though, is for the technology to be wrested from the Macheads and the James Lipton wannabes and given to the Windows-Linux community, where it will do some good. Until then, it’s not ready for prime time.” WHOA. That’s amazing. The use of “Windows-Linux” at the end is, I think, yet another milestone in the adoption of Linux.
• Something about next generation software carrying metadata and OPML. Cool song– “The internet is for porn” (sounds like it was sung by muppets).
• Hank Barry talked about the potential vulnerability of the platform (relying on iPods) and the vulnerability of the mp3 file format. Wants open source clients?
• Larry Lessig’s summary of the internet “Tech people have great ideas. Lawyers come in with hatchets and cut it apart.” Wants to begin constructing the legal architecture for this stuff now.
• “Architecting for Freedom”– that sounds like a bumper sticker I’d put on my car (better yet– “Freedom Inside”; a sticker like “Intel Inside”). Lessig is leading a session later today.

Got a favorite podcast?

Related link: http://www.bloggercon.org/

Bloggercon III is underway! The opening session, led by Dave, ended in a group singalong of “This Land is Your Land”

I’ll be in room 290 most of the day (the exception: I’ll be in Scott Rosenberg’s Journalism section later in the day).

Are you at bloggercon?

I’m distracted by other news right now, but Jeff Shafer from Sprint sent me the following about my earlier Treo 650/Bluetooth posts:

I know there was some discussion among your readers that Sprint prohibits
the use of Treos and other devices as modems, and as I mentioned, Sprint
does not “stand in the way” of our customers who choose to use their
devices in this manner.

However, to be perfectly clear and avoid any confusion among our
customers and your readers, there are limitations to using devices as
modems in the unlimited Sprint Vision pricing plans.  Customers who
choose to use their devices in this manner may be required to select a
different pricing plan.  I do not have the details on exactly how the
alternative pricing works (these would be available from a Sprint PCS
service representative), but these are plans that are in existence now
and are designed to help customers who have needs other than for the
standard unlimited approach.

Related link: http://www.writeboard.com/

The team at 37signals, developers of Basecamp, just launched a teaser for their next application, Writeboard. Hmm….