Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

Time to look back on the weekly numbers. BottomFeeder downloads proceeded at a rate of 170 per day:

Platform	BottomFeeder Downloads
Windows	449
Update	231
Linux x86	119
Mac X	116
CE ARM	78
Mac 8/9	72
Windows98/ME	23
Solaris	8
HPUX	19
AIX	14
Linux Sparc	13
Linux PPC	12
SGI	10
Sources	10
ADUX	4
Solaris86	3
CE x86	1

Looks like the normal distribution. Now a look at the HTML accesses:

Tool	Percentage of Accesses
Mozilla	49.7%
Internet Explorer	34.1%
Planet Smalltalk	4.9%
Opera	3.2%
Other	4.1%
MSN Bot	2.7%
Megite	1.3%

Finally, the RSS accesses:

Tool	Percentage of Accesses
BottomFeeder	20.9%
Mozilla	17.2%
Other	14.4%
BlogLines	10%
Net News Wire	8.1%
NewsGator	4.4%
Internet Explorer	4.3%
Google Feed Fetcher	4.2%
Safari RSS	4.1%
BlogSearch	2.5%
SharpReader	1.7%
Planet Smalltalk	1.2%
RSS Bandit	1%
RSS 2 Email	1%
Opera	1%
MSN Bot	1%
JetBrains	1%
Jakarta	1%
Liferea	1%
Java	1%

When I pushed out version 4.2, I forgot one small thing: I didn't promote the Solaris x86 link up from the dev section to the regular release section. That's done now, so you can grab the version for Solaris from the regular downloads.

Looks like the American League races are heating up - take a look at the current standings:

Six weeks ago, it looked like the wild card was definitely coming out of the central division - now that's up in the air. It also looked like Boston was starting to pull away, but that's no longer happening - the Yanks have been coming back strong (thanks to some decent pitching). If Matsui and Sheffield come back in late August/early September as expected, the end of the season will be a fun thing to watch.

Technorati Tags: yankees, baseball

Ezboard has been having fairly epic problems with their server software, most of which is written in Cincom Smalltalk. Rather than actually explain the problems they have had, they just want to point the finger at us:

The current ezboard program is written in Smalltalk, a programming language that is becoming obsolete. The current program has many bugs that can't be fixed because each time the developers try to fix them, it causes something else to break. That seems to be the nature of Smalltalk. In the beginning, the program was simple, but as more and more features were demanded and added, it became more complicated -- and more buggy. It is also becoming difficult for ezboard to find skilled Smalltalk programmers. As a result, ezboard has had to choose to stay as it is, adding no new features and fixing no bugs, or move to a new architecture that will make it simpler and quicker to make changes, add new features, etc., and that will still be easy for board owners to customize. That is the purpose of the move.

Hmm. They wrote the original application in VWNC 3.0, and didn't use VisualWave (the then current HTML technology add on for VW). Instead, they wrote their own server from scratch. They didn't use a database on the back end, instead serializing objects to disk. Those two early decisions came back to haunt them in a big way - we actually spoke to them about dealing with them inside Smalltalk, by:

• Updating to the Web Toolkit, which works in conjunction with your stock web server
• Upgrading from serialized objects to a database back end

Instead, they decided to go with a full rewrite in something else, and a general blasting of our product as a way of making excuses. There's no reason for them to do that. Just look at what they say instead: fixing bugs creates other ones. That has nothing to do with Smalltalk (or any other language, for that matter) - it has to do with whatever process they use to develop code. If that's happening to them now, I guarantee that it will happen to them in the future, without regard to what development/deployment platform they end up using.

Update: Looks like they pulled that post down.

Update: As shown in the comments, you can see the original posting in the Google Cache.

Technorati Tags: PR

Apparently, making unauthorized copies of movies is ok, so long as it comes out of the marketing budget:

What happens when an organization that is best known for inveighing against the unauthorized copying of movies gets caught doing exactly that? The Motion Picture Association of America was caught with its pants down, admitting to making unauthorized copies of the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated in advance of this week's Sundance Film Festival.

But at least the copyright owner had given them permission, right?

This Film Is Not Yet Rated looks at the motion picture ratings system created and run by the MPAA. Director Kirby Dick submitted the film for rating in November. After receiving the movie, the MPAA subsequently made copies without Dick's permission. Dick had specifically requested in an e-mail that the MPAA not make copies of the movie. The MPAA responded by saying that "the confidentiality of your film is our first priority."

Fortunately for the MPAA, this may all fall under "fair use" rights. Which they have, and we don't - at least, according to them:

According to Mark Lemley, a professor at the Stanford Law School, the MPAA may have been within its rights to make copies of the film. Given that the MPAA's intent isn't financial gain and that the whole situation may rise above the level of trading barbs through the media into legal action, making a copy may be justified. Personally, I can't see any justification for an organization such as the MPAA ignoring a directive from a copyright owner, but IANAL. A "digital version" of the movie was submitted for screening, according to Dick's attorney, Michael Donaldson. If that digital version turns out to be a DVD, the MPAA could also find itself in hot water for violating the DMCA. Oh, the irony! Either way, the MPAA can't be happy about being put into a position where they are forced to justify the same actions they decry when undertaken by a consumer.

There's that pesky DMCA, which could make the whole thing illegal. They should all be asked to settle for $2500...

Technorati Tags: DRM, MPAA

I'll be at corporate HQ all week - I'm giving an "Intro to Smalltalk" training class to an internal (i.e., other Cincom employees) group. Should be a good week. The week after that, my daughter is taking a 3 day golf camp - which will give me three mornings to fit some golf in. Then after that, it's off for the annual pilgrimage to DisneyWorld. This year we are staying at "The Beach Club" - which has the most amazing pool of any resort I've ever been to. Should be a good wrap to summer - and wrap it will be, with school starting up right afterwards, and ESUG on the way.

Where does the time go?

I've had a few people tell me that I should be able to copy stuff to my iPod from Windows (even though the synch machine is my Mac), so long as I set updates to "manual". Well, not with iTunes. Hooked it up, and ITunes tells me that in order to use the iPod with Windows, I need to reset it to factory defaults. Absolutely brilliant. So it turns out that XPlay is going to be useful, allowing me to use the device as I want (and should be able!) to use it.

Sigh.

A long while back, I created a simple enclosure handler for BottomFeeder. It's pretty basic; it wakes up at night, checks your feeds for enclosures, and downloads them. The basic implementation had some issues though, based on the workings of VisualWorks. At present (this is slated to be fixed for the Winter release), http downloads proceed in memory. For things like your average HTML/XML page, that's fine. For things like podcasts and vlogs though, it can cause problems. Additionally, the initial implementation forked off a thread per download. Combine those two and you get to "all memory used up" pretty darn fast.

I changed it to do linear downloads, and I've also created a small application that just does downloads based on a settings file. So the manager will now look for that separate app, and if it finds it, dish off downloads to it. That way, any over-use of memory doesn't impact the main app, and long downloads won't tie up the normal operation of the tool.

I haven't released any of that yet, because I want to give it a real world test first. Next week, I'm heading to Cincinnati, so I'll get a chance to try it out. If it all works as I expect, I'll push the new stuff up for download.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, development, cst

Bill de hÓra says that Seaside makes new kinds of web apps possible.

Technorati Tags: seaside

Dare Obasanjo cuts through a lot of the hype and complaints about whether posters/linkers (vis-a-vis Jason Calacanis and Digg) should get paid or not. In any popular field, there's always a market for professionals; the people who think that's somehow distasteful should just give away the tools they sell, and see how that works out for them. The more interesting thing is how Dare sums up:

The interesting question for me is whether sites like Digg are immune to the 1% rule or not. When I used to participate on Kuro5hin it was clear to me that a small set of users determined the focus of the site even though there were thousands of users who could vote on stories and rate comments. It was also easy to see how the direction and the topics covered by the site would change as certain cliques of users left the site. Digg looks to me to be just like Kuro5hin with a slightly better UI and a different community. I would be surprised if both sites don't face the same kind of issues when it comes to small sets of users dominating the content and focus of the site despite Kevin Rose's protestations that this isn't the case. 

Rose can protest all he wants, it's just human nature at work. You can see it on USENET groups, in mailing lists, on Wikis, blog commenters, etc. I suspect that if you asked a local politician whether they get a disproportionate number of calls from a small number of people, they would say yes. The fact of the matter is, most people in any community just lurk. Trying to claim otherwise is like spitting into the wind.

There was a rather stupid bug in the generation of the per-category syndication feeds - the oldest ones were being fetched rather than the latest ones, based on a backwards boolean :) I've fixed that, and regenerated the files.

Chris Pirillo notes that Microsoft has finally recognized the obvious:

The Ribbon, a new top-of-the-window feature in most of the suite’s applications -- including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint -- takes up too much space, say many beta users and reviewers . In response, the next Office 2007 update, a so-called Technical Refresh (TR), will include changes to the Ribbon. Although an undocumented - or at least unpublicized - Ctrl-F1 key combination has “collapsed” the Ribbon since the very first beta to provide more viewing and working space for documents, Microsoft program manger Jensen Harris has outlined new ways that the feature will be called in future versions.

It's a good thing that they got plenty of feedback, so that they could make this adjustment before the release, rather than afterwards.

Technorati Tags: office, ribbon

Jonathan Schwartz pulls something of a "fast one" in his latest post:

And lastly, there was a discussion of wage rates and cost of living on the desirability of an economy for R&D.

My point - shared by many in the room, but not all - was that Silicon Valley's (and certainly Sun's) business is largely insensitive to the price of labor on the world market. As one of my staff members said recently, "when it comes to hiring, this ain't Costco, we don't buy in bulk." If we can bring a product to market three or six or twelve months earlier than planned, wage rates as a percentage of total return aren't even measurable in calculating returns. (What was Bill Joy's starting salary? My point... who cares.)

It seems to be the case that companies all over Silicon Valley (and beyond) care a lot. If they didn't, a lot of the hiring in India simply wouldn't be happening. I certainly admit to having price sensitivity about hiring in North America; hiring someone in Silicon Valley is going to cost a lot more than hiring an equivalently skilled person nearly anywhere else (Manhattan excepted). If you don't think that enters into decision making, you live on another planet.

Technorati Tags: salary

At least my daughter got off the ground on time. She took her first solo flight today - while I head to corporate to teach a Smalltalk class, she's heading to visit her cousins. my flight to Dayton had one of those unexplained delays on the ground. Scheduled departure time: 8:35 AM. Actual: about 9:20 AM.

I still have about an hour to drive, too - Cincom's HQ is about an hour from the Dayton airport. At least I remembered the FM transmitter for my iPod...

Boris is helping setup a Smalltalk get together in Vancouver, B.C.:

What: Informal Seaside/Squeak/VisualWorks/Smalltalk Meet Up

When: Friday, August 18, 2006 @ 6:00PM PST

Where: Stamp’s Landing Neighborhood Pub - 610 Stamps Landing, Vancouver, BC - Google Map

Who: Everyone with interests in Seaside, Squeak, VisualWorks and anything else to do with Smalltalk is welcomed to join us for a beer (coffee, milk, coke, juice, water) or two and informal chat about state of things in the Seaside world and whatever else people choose to catch up on. There is no agenda, simply because putting a bunch of passionate Smalltalkers in the same room seems to turn into a good thing on its own, so why ruin it? ;)

Sounds like fun :)

Technorati Tags: seaside

I'm teaching a Smalltalk Intro class this week (and my network access here in the training room is kind of wonky). So posting is going to be light.

Have a look at the Vista Smalltalk blog, and take note of the last few posts - especially this one. It looks like there's going to be a native Smalltalk for .NET, which will expand the playing field for all of us. Want cross platform Smalltalk? Use VisualWorks. Want native Windows with access to the power of VW? Use ObjectStudio. Want native .NET? Use Vista Smalltalk. Want a full open source solution? Use Squeak.

Come on in, the water's fine :)

Technorati Tags: .NET, windows, development

I find this kind of thing to be fairly silly - in a discussion about following web references back to something of interest, Scoble says:

One other thing. I didn’t link to Fred Wilson’s blog. Why? Cause if you really cared you’d have read it by now, right? I assume my readers know how to use Google and TechMeme. Cause you’re smarter than me and I can find Fred in both places right now.

Yeah, Steve Gillmor explained to me why NOT linking is better than linking. Tell me Fred, did your traffic from search engines go up today?

Except... a link makes it easier on your readers. Sure, I could find his blog (and the post of interest) via Google. But I have to actually do that, either using the search feature of BottomFeeder, or in a browser. I could have gotten there immediately if there was a link.

It's not that gestures have no value - if I'm not specifically looking, and I stumble across something, I can use tools to find more information. Likewise, I can rely on search feeds for references. But why should I set up a search feed for "Scoble", for instance, if what I really want is to read his blog? It's easier to just subscribe. Likewise, it would have been simpler to just follow a link.

So in the spirit of additional feedback, I didn't find Fred Wilson's blog, because I didn't bother to look in the first place. Had you linked, I would have. Making me plow through a search engine is way too much like work.

Technorati Tags: gestures, attention

I heard on the Buzz Out Loud podcast last night that the E3 game conference is dead. They talked about it, and brought up that basically, various game companies have been spending tons of money on a marketing effort of dubious value. Using online video, blogs, and podcasts, you can get the same message out, to the same audience, at a tiny fraction of the cost. That raises the obvious question: are CES and other big shows next?

More from Scoble here.

Technorati Tags: marketing, PR

I was trying to figure out a networking issue (turns out that it's related to the access rights in the training room) when I stumbled across a nasty little bug in BottomFeeder. In Bf, I use a HTTP package called NetResources, which adds application level niceties on top of the stock HTTP libs in VisualWorks - cookie management, caching, and a number of other things. As part of that, we add extensions to the HttpClient class, and also override the class definition. That's where things got hairy.

If you override class definitions, you really need to check them with each new release of the base product. I didn't do that, and I ran into this - here's the stock definition of the class:

Smalltalk.Net defineClass: #HttpClient
	superclass: #{Net.NetClient}
	indexedType: #none
	private: false
	instanceVariableNames: 'request proxyHost keepAlive useProxy connection
 entityParsingOptions cookieAgent enableCookies protocol authPolicy '
	classInstanceVariableNames: ''
	imports: ''
	category: 'Net-HTTP-Support'

And here's what I had in 7.3:

Smalltalk.Net defineClass: #HttpClient
	superclass: #{Net.NetClient}
	indexedType: #none
	private: false
	instanceVariableNames: 'request proxyHost keepAlive useProxyAuthorization connection
 entityParsingOptions cookieAgent enableCookies protocol originalResponse '
	classInstanceVariableNames: ''
	imports: ''
	category: 'Net-HTTP-Support'

The variable "originalResponse" was added so that after certain exceptions, we could go back and examine the state. The big problem is that other than that, the definitions should match (and they didn't). I patched that this morning, but I think I'll do a fresh build when I get back from this trip. Grab the patch for Http-Overrides in the meantime!

Technorati Tags: development, BottomFeeder

David Simmons got interviewed by BitWise magazine - looks like he's going to get back to work on the project. It's kind of interesting to see that with the Vista Smalltalk project also going on - maybe he and Peter Fisk should talk?

Hat tip Eric Winger

Technorati Tags: .NET, development

Joel Spolsky has just discovered the beauty of anonymous functions:

Jeez, that is handy. Notice that I'm creating a function there on the fly, not even bothering to name it, just picking it up by its ears and tossing it into a function.

As soon as you start thinking in terms of anonymous functions as arguments, you might notice code all over the place that, say, does something to every element of an array.

He then notes that some older languages don't allow this, and makes an assumption:

Many older languages simply had no way to do this kind of stuff. Other languages let you do it, but it's hard (for example, C has function pointers, but you have to declare and define the function somewhere else). Object-oriented programming languages aren't completely convinced that you should be allowed to do anything with functions.

Java required you to create a whole object with a single method called a functor if you wanted to treat a function like a first class object. Combine that with the fact that many OO languages want you to create a whole file for each class, and it gets really klunky fast. If your programming language requires you to use functors, you're not getting all the benefits of a modern programming environment. See if you can get some of your money back.

Yet again, I have to point out that Smalltalk had this back in the 80's. Java didn't because it's a dumbed down language with training wheels, which is supposed to somehow add power. Umm, right.

Perhaps Joel should have a look at Smalltalk, and see what else he's missed :)

Looks like F-Script is getting an update too:

F-Script 1.3.4 has been released. F-Script is an embeddable scripting language based on Smalltalk for Mac OS X, providing access to Cocoa and other Objective-C objects.

It's Smalltalk time again :)

Now here's a headline that makes my morning - from the New York Times:

Technorati Tags: yankees, baseball

Here's something you don't see every day: other authors pleading with J.K. Rowling to spare Harry:

Best-selling authors John Irving and Stephen King both made a plea to Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling not to kill the boy wizard in the final book of the series, but Rowling made no promises, the Reuters news service reported.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are just waiting for that book to appear :)

Technorati Tags: Potter

Wow, I guess it's a good day to not be in Columbia, MD. The high here in Dayton should be 96 F - which sounds hot, but boy, look at Columbia:

Ouch.

Technorati Tags: heatwave

Nick Carr digs out more data from Richard MacManus:

Richard MacManus has published some striking statistics about Digg, supplied to him by the site Diggtrends. The data reveal that of Digg's 445,000 registered users, only 2,287 contributed any stories to the site during the last six weeks. But here are the real eye-openers: The top 100 users contributed fully 55% of the stories that appeared on the site's front page, and the top 10 users - yep, you can count 'em on your own two hands - contributed a whopping 30% of the front page stories. Peer production? I think a better term for it would be peerage production.

It appears that Digg does have editors, they are just unpaid. Which leads me to believe that Jason Calacanis is crazy like a fox.

Technorati Tags: social, digg

The excitingly hot weather continued here today - we knocked off the training class at 4:30 after the power dropped for the second time at 4:30. It was exciting to drive on streets like this:

with all the traffic lights out. Fortunately, there's power here at the hotel. The car's external thermometer read 101, but nearby signs had it at 95. With over 60% humidity, it's nasty either way...

Michael has created an interface to the Berkeley Database from Cincom Smalltalk. Load it up from the public repository and give it a whirl.

Technorati Tags: oss, database, cst

Looks like Calacanis' experiment is working out:

The first 10 Navigators: We've hired three of the top 12 DIGG users, the #1 user from Newsvine, the #1 user from Reddit, and a bunch of Weblogs, Inc. folks.

So much for the theory that people do this kind of thing for status alone, and wouldn't dream of getting paid. Utopians take note: if there's a market, there's revenue.

Technorati Tags: digg, netscape

Just imagine Calvin with this fully automatic rubber band gatling gun:

Suzy Derkins, watch out :)

Technorati Tags: toys

David Leibs, who was one of the PARC guys way back, is speaking at an AMD event:

Then check out this townhall on August 8 to learn more about what it means to you: Business Partner Townhall Special guest speakers: David Liebs and Michael Wall, AMD.

...

David Leibs joined AMD at the beginning of 2006 as an AMD Fellow to work on Acceleration for both Java and XML. Prior to AMD David worked at Oracle as the J2EE Appserver architect. David worked for many years on Smalltalk-80, first at Xerox Parc and subsequently at ParcPlace Systems

If you don't get the connection, AMD is one of our larger customers - they use Cincom Smalltalk in very mission critical areas.

Jon Udell shows just how deep the rabbit hole goes when all you want is a clip from the middle of an audio stream.

Peter Fisk questions the future of the static hegemony:

Successful Internet applications today are based on dynamic languages: Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, Lisp, Smalltalk and Javascript.

I can't understand how statically compiled “rich client” applications can be successfully deployed to thousands of users across the Internet - unless all those users have precisely the same requirements.

Couldn't have said it better myself

Technorati Tags: development

Earlier in the year, the Yankees lost both Matsui and Sheffield to injuries. Sheffield came back, and Matsui is on the mend. Now it seems to be the Red Sox' turn - and it's pretty bad luck for them to lose Wakefield and Varitek at this point, down the stretch.

Varitek in particular is a huge loss - he is to the Red Sox what Jeter is for the Yankees. Ramirez and Ortiz may hit bigger, but Varitek always seems to be part of action in the big games. However, things are more interesting all around than they were a month ago. The White Sox have fallen well off the pace the Tigers are setting (and boy, doesn't that sound weird to say!) - which puts the wild card back in play as part of the mix in the AL East. We could easily end up with another Yankees/Red Sox duel in the playoffs.

Technorati Tags: baseball, yankees, redsox

It looks like Norway would like to define Apple's business plans; they want Apple to open up the iTunes music store:

Apple Computer Inc. has struck a defiant stance with Scandinavian regulators, staunchly defending its right to make its iPod the only portable music player compatible with songs purchased from the company's iTunes music store.

Norway isn't the only place this sort of thinking is happening - I was listening to the Buzz Out Loud podcast this afternoon (August 3rd, 2006), and it was clear to me that Molly Wood is thinking the same thing. Here's the deal: there are tons of mp3 players on the market, and more than a few music stores. The iTunes store has the largest share, and that might have something to do with iTunes offering a better experience than most of the competition. The only thing that truly stands in the way of a better store is the RIAA and their insistence on brain dead DRM; if eMusic had access to more labels, I rather expect that their share of the downloadable music market would rise dramatically if they had such access.

Heck, if Apple is forced to include other devices, maybe I should demand that Sun start offering Squeak side by side with Java. It would make about as much sense.

Technorati Tags: iTunes, iPod, mp3, music

Patrick Logan notes a few interesting comments from Gilad Bracha at JavaWorld:

"It has come to our attention that some people want to program in things other than Java," Bracha quipped.

Sun is broadening its support for dynamic languages to satisfy user demand, but also to help broaden the overall community of developers who use the Java platform, Bracha said.

I've often wondered why Sun got so adamant about Java (the language) as opposed to the VM. From their perspective, why should they care so long as the VM is in use? I suspect that Microsoft's moves to support things like Iron Python and Vista Smalltalk are having some impact.

Technorati Tags: java, dynamic

Andres Valloud is giving a talk on "Truly Efficient Smalltalk" at OOPSLA this fall.

Technorati Tags: OOPSLA

Simon Lin links to a Bruce Tate PDF on things Java should steal from Ruby. The thing is, if Sun did that, they would actually have either Ruby or Smalltalk. Since both of those exist already, there are shorter steps to productivity than waiting for that to happen.

An interesting aside that Bruce Tate points out - static language advocates seem to think that you can't have refactoring without the manifest typing. This ignores that fact that - like just about everything else - the refactoring browser was invented in Smalltalk.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, ruby, java, dynamic

It looks like a major corporation is willing to test the DMCA waters: Circuit City is offering to rip DVDs (ones you own) to your video player (such as a video iPod).

The stupid part is the fact that we even need this service. If I buy a DVD, I should be able (under Fair Use) to copy that DVD to another device I own. So long as I'm not selling the results, (and I believe that Circuit City should be ok here, because they are ripping things you bring them) any violation would be yours, not theirs. The dicey part is that to rip DVDs, you have to circumvent the copy protection, which is illegal. Looks like test case time to me - I'm sure that the MPAA will go bats. With luck, they'll be sent to the dark place they belong.

File this under "Too good to be true" - I should have looked into it instead of posting from the airport. As Seth says in the comments, it's not happening.

CNet reports on a BlackHat talk that brought up security issues with some aggregators:

Also, attackers could send malicious code to mailing lists that offer RSS or Atom feeds and commandeer vulnerable systems that way, Auger said. Feeds are popular because they let people consolidate information streams from multiple sites, such as blogs, in one application, called a feed reader, removing the need to surf to multiple sites. In other news:

Many of the popular feed reading applications are faulted because the designers have failed to add valuable security checks, Auger said. In particular, the applications should not allow JavaScript that is included in feeds to run. Instead, it should be filtered out, he said.

BottomFeeder ignores Javascript (it can't do otherwise) - which makes it safe from this sort of thing

Technorati Tags: rss, atom, syndication, security

Long time readers of this blog will know that I have high levels of skepticism around Sun's business plans. However, that's not a universally held view, and the news of the second round of cuts yesterday (part of the year long plan to shed about 5000 staff) drew some positive press:

Schwartz's promotion and the job cuts led UBS Warburg analyst Benjamin Reitzes to suggest on Thursday that Sun has the same ingredients for a turnaround that Xerox had earlier in the decade.

"Many aspects of the potential turnaround seem familiar," he said in a report. "Both have large, sticky customer bases, high market share, hidden assets, bloated cost structure and solid cash flow potential...We believe shares represent a compelling value."

I'm still skeptical, but a deep enough round of cuts could put them back on the positive side of the line. It remains to be seen whether this round will do that. It also remains to be seen whether they can, in the long run, afford the large software expenditures they are making for stuff they give away.

Technorati Tags: management

It's that time again - time for the logs. Next week at this time I'll be in Disneyworld, so posts like this one might be a bit delayed. It might be the slow season, but BottomFeeder downloads are proceeding nicely: 193 per day last week. The details:

Platform	BottomFeeder Downloads
Windows	654
Windows98/ME	144
Update	123
Linux x86	115
Mac X	113
CE ARM	78
Mac 8/9	58
Solaris	19
HPUX	15
Sources	10
Linux Sparc	9
AIX	7
Linux PPC	3
SGI	2

Interesting jump in the Windows download number; there wasn't a new release, so I'm not sure what that's about. Off to the HTML page accesses:

Tool	Percentage of Accesses
Mozilla	44.9%
Internet Explorer	37.4%
Planet Smalltalk	6.6%
MSN Bot	3.5%
Other	10.5%
Opera	2.4%
Megite	1.3%

IE has been creeping up over the last few weeks and months, from the 20 percent range into the high 30s. It's almost reached parity with Mozilla now. Which kind of bites, since Microsoft still can't be bothered to fix the CSS box model :/

Off to the RSS page accesses:

Tool	Percentage of Accesses
BottomFeeder	19.1%
Mozilla	18.1%
Other	10.6%
BlogLines	8.9%
Net News Wire	7.6%
Internet Explorer	6.5%
Safari RSS	5.2%
Google Feed Fetcher	4.5%
NewsGator	4.3%
BlogSearch	2.6%
Larbin	2.1%
Planet Smalltalk	1.8%
SharpReader	1.4%
Reddit	1.2%
Akregator	1.2%
Opera	1.1%
RSS Bandit	1.1%
Jakarta	1%
RSS 2 Email	1%
JetBrains	1%
Liferea	1%
MSN Bot	1%
Java	1%
Lilina	1%

Still a lot of tool diversity in the aggregator space.

Boris Popov points to a comment from Bruce Tate:

I’m interested in Ruby, and a whole lot of other people are in this camp too, because it’s a dynamic language with a catalyst. Other languages have better web development experiences Seaside on Smalltalk, for example. But Rails has traction, and the combination of productivity in a clean language with good market share is tough to beat.

Boris asks the obvious question - are we into fashion statements, or actual delivery of working code? Boris is into the actual productivity, and says:

If you think there’s a better way of going about web development, who cares about traction? We took a plunge back in April to go with Seaside for our new web portal and couldn’t have been happier with the progress so far.

Try it for yourself and make up your own mind - don't just follow the crowd.

Technorati Tags: seaside, development

I've made some improvements to the HTTP downloading code used in BottomFeeder. The stock code downloads everything into memory, with no real option to save to a file. I added some support code to do that a long while back for the upgrade tools, but they simply dropped the downloaded bytes to a file as soon as they were all in - which still filled a large memory buffer when it happened.

Now, that's been improved. I made some modifications to the HttpClient subclass I use in the upgrade tools, and gave it the ability to download straight to a file. This makes the EnclosureHandler practical - previously, using it could run past your memory settings, and cause problems (or simply cause excessive memory use). Now, that's no longer an issue. Next, I need to look at some code Blaine sent me. It was written for Dolphin, but the porting should mainly be in the file/stream area. It provides direct access to the iPod, which would be very nice.

The changes necessary weren't terribly complex - when the HttpClient starts grabbing data, it sets up a stream to download to in class HttpBuildHandler:

openBodyStream: aMessageBody
	aMessageBody isSimple 
		ifTrue: [aMessageBody setByteSource:  (ReadWriteStream on: (ByteArray new: 1024)) ]

All I did is have that code open a stream on a file (yes, it's simplistic - I only use this subclass to download files). The only hard part comes into cleanup; I trigger events so that the object that kicks off the download can move the file that's downloaded (to a temp file name) to the place and name it belongs. It works pretty well, and I'm happily using it. To get the update, you need to:

• Be on version 4.2
• Change your update path to end in /dev
• Grab all available updates

If you try that and have problems, let me know.

Update: I posted a new build under the dev downloads. So you can just grab that.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Sanity is starting to break out in the software development field:

One of the big points was that Ruby has turned the conversation from compiled/interpreted and strictly typed vs. dynamically typed to verifiable. Ruby has proven that strict typing isn’t as important as working code. The compiler has become a big spell-checker, but tests are the only thing that can verify that the program is actually working as expected. Many times we have to add syntax to get the compiler to shut up. What really matters is how the program runs.

Us Smalltalkers have only known this for a few decades :)

Technorati Tags: dynamic, smalltalk, ruby