JavaFX More Popular Than Even Sun Expected

JavaFX1.0 is out. Go play with it. Evidently, everyone else already has.
This morning, when Sun Microsystems opened the doors on its packages of JavaFX 1.0, developer suite and all, the servers buckled. Seems like even Sun had low expectations for this seemingly also-ran RIA/presentation layer language. Either that, or something is dreadfully wrong with this infrastructure company that can't keep its infrastructure running at top speed.
Tonight, Sun held a little soiree at Temple in San Francisco, where they had partners and pedagogues extolling the virtues of this new Java-like whiz-bang. After hearing all of the same things from Sun, I went after some of the partner programmers who were on hand, demonstrating their decidedly multi-media-centric creations.
And after speaking to Lucas from EffectiveUI, I'm convinced that this may not be a complete disaster. He'd worked with Flex, as EffectiveUI is primarily focused on Webish RIAs. In his opinion, the animation capabilities in JavaFX are fantastic. Some of the backside is still a little warty, but if you've already got a Java-based Web infrastructure, he said that this is better than Swing. He said he was an old-hand at Swing, and acknowledged that there were amazing things that could still be done with it. But the way he described it, he prefered handling user interfaces and graphics in JavaFX.
That alone is enough to make this worth taking a look at. Most of the world felt the same way, because Sun's servers were crippled today, slowing to a snail's pace as everyone and their siblings sucked down the fresh binaries.
Dan Ingalls, of Lively Kernel fame, was also on hand, demonstrating the latest level of meta: Lively kernel running on top of JavaFX. He then created the world's first Wankel Rotary Piano by tying a keyboard widget to a demonstration of the afforementioned motor. Not really sure how any of Dan's work will make Sun money, but it's great to see him creatively enabled. The man and his team are artists.
My only complaint about everything I saw tonight: slow. Sun obviously has some optimization work ahead of it. Every JavaFX demo from the company shows off 9 streaming HD videos playing at once. Then they focus in on one, and it gets choppy. Great, you can play 9 movies at once. Can you play any of them fullscreen without dropping half the frames? I'm not sure because they never show less tan 9 videos running at once. I would simply like to see for myself that JavaFX can play one HD movie without getting choppy. Some of the demos were choppy too. A tad worrying, but I'm sure it will only get faster.
Hats off to Sun. Looks like everything went right this time. Now the hard part: beating Adobe and Microsoft.

Python 3.0 Slithers to a Final

Today is a new day for Python programmers. The hard working core committers from the Python 3.0 project released the final version of that update to that most serpentine of programming languages.
But this is no ordinary update, replete with bug fixes, new features and refinements. No, this is a complete break with the past, so much so that "Hello, World" written in 2.5 or earlier will not work in 3.0.
But this is for the better. We spoke to some of the people working on this update, and they explained where all the nooks and crannies were in this, and in the 2.6 release. Have a gander for yourself, George.
Or, just click on that big green Tree Boa on the right to go directly to Python's homepage. The big list of changes and such are all in there.

Programming is Creative

Last Friday, I had the privilege of getting a tour of Pixar Studios, the company behind the movies Toy Story, Wall-E, and Cars. The campus is based in Emeryville, California, near Oakland where I live. It's a secluded little patch of green amidst a sea of overpasses, homeless people and a Home Depot.

The company grounds are resplendent with roses, soccer fields, a pool and all manner of fun things to keep bodies and minds fresh. It's a refreshing workplace that made me wonder if this is what Xerox Parc had been like back in the day.

At Pixar, the whimsical and the fun are encouraged. The kid in every employ is coaxed out through constant artistic renderings, radical cubicle modifcations and a stimulating afterwork schedule of things to do.

Of course, this is also the sort of workplace where people spend days at a time, working their fingers to the bone to get movies done in time for their theatrical release dates. It's also a company that produces its own rendering and deisgn software, and has a history of selling boxed products, such as Renderman and Typestyler. I actually have a boxed copy of Typestyler.

With all of these different folks smooshed together in this one magical place, it became clear to me that the writers, artists, actors, directors and software developers here all had something in common: they were all creative talents. Call them no-collar workers.

I'm nnot exactly sure how they've done it, but Pixar has fostered an environment where fun and hard work are both acceptable. In fact, they're both mandated. It's more like a college than a company.

Perhaps pulling out the beanbag chairs and setting up the ping-pong table isn't enough. You must also get your team into these acts of funness. Mandatory ping-pong tournaments, or Friday beer-bashes might be on order. The Pixar folks seem to enjoy these sorts of work-related activities. So much so that there are often after-hours parties in work areas. Internal social interaction is good for creative workers. Maybe it's not for the lawyers or accountants, but when a team is trying to build something massive together, it can only help to get everyone into the same psychic groove.

Oh, and it also helps to have good lunches made on campus every day. Tastey!

Rich Green Moves to Greener Pastures

Rich Green shouldn't have much trouble getting another job. That's a good thing because Rich was recently let go from Sun, where he headed up the entire software division. Solaris. Java. NetBeans. Glassfish. Everything.

It's definitely hard to think of a more punishing, difficult job than making sense out of Sun's software portfolio. In a company where the guiding line, recently, is to open source everything, Sun still has a remarkable amount of closed source software that it supports and sells. That list has gotten shorter under Rich's reign, but it's by no means gotten any better.

Sun has always been known for writing very competent, technically advanced software that is years ahead of the curve. Unfortunately, it's also known for producing software that moves too slowly to keep up with the accepted curve of excellence. Such is the case with Solaris. Solaris users are ravenous, and can't understand how people get work done in other Unix environments. And yet, newcomers mostly stare at Solaris and ask "so, why is this better than Linux?"

It's like standing in a field of hedgerows, then picking the one quartered off field with the nicest grass, and an excellent caretaker, but only 10 feet square of space on each side.

In truth, the only way I see for Sun to move forward, away from the smoking heap of rubble that is its software portfolio, is to move closer to the consumer side. That means paying more attention to usability, simplicity, and penetration. Not exactly Sun's strong points. The Solaris faithful, of late, have had the throne of Murdock to worship at, and that's a good thing.

But is it too late for all this stuff? Maybe, maybe not. There are many other options than my consumer/power-user direction, though Sun's forthcoming release of JavaFX 1.0 could help there.

Another option is bringing the entire company together to confront the storage/database market. Sun's already offering solid-state drive arrays running ZFS, meaning RAID is no longer needed. A major advancement that's not offered anywhere else. If I were Mr. Schwartz, I'd be concentrating all firepower on that particular super Star Destroyer. Too bad EMC would be waiting at the door to kick Sun's shins and say "welcome!"

Anyway, here's hoping Rich Green finds a good company to work with. I think he'll do a great job somewhere that's a lot smaller and less troubled than Sun. It can't be easy to work at a company that seems to put all its effort into losing money.

Merb 1.0 Arrives

All the great things Ruby on Rails does for developers don't matter much once you really start to get used to the environment. As with any piece of software, familiarity can breed contempt, and that's why there are alternative ways of doing just about everything in the development world. Hence, the release of Merb 1.0. RoR is great for getting up and running, if you want to build a MySQL-backed Web application that will be standing alone, and working only with its own data.

Beyond that, things can get sticky. Some folks have turned to JRuby to remove constraints. Others have turned to Merb. We wrote about Merb, recently, and felt it was time to bring the story back to the front page, as version 1.0 has arrived. It's the Ruby framework for folks who don't like waiting for Rails to restart.

Monday's Linkapalooza

Naturally, Linkapalooza isn't coming out until News on Monday. But until then, I think we can allow you to sneak a peak at the forthcoming Linkapalooza. Observe:


The best thing yet found in the Android source code.

The story behind the massive network and infrastructure behind those cheap “Single?” signs on lawns.

JavaScript graph plotting tool.

50 Must read books on Web development.

Tips for preparing a technical presentation.

n introduction to Microsoft's F#

Today's Random Wikipedia Entry: Blogging!

Two Updated IDEs

This week saw the release of two major updates to two very different IDEs. The first was Komodo 5.0, ActiveState's dynamic language-focused IDE for Ruby, Python or Perl fans. Hence the dragon above. Actually, it was something of kismet here, because today, as it happens, the front page Wikipedia random entry just happened to be about the lovely green fellow you see above. Naturally, with the open copyright image therein, we just had to use him here.

The second big updated IDE is IntelliJ's IDEA 8.0, which arrived yesterday. We'll have a full story, as always, at SD Times dot com next week. But until then, here's a snippet of what we'll be saying about the release:

SQL has come home to roost in the new IDEA. JetBrains, on Thursday, November 6, released IntelliJ IDEA 8, the latest update to its popular Java IDE. But Java was hardly the focus of this release, which includes SQL query design and management tools for the first time. A new UML class browser has also been added, expanding the capabilities of this IDE beyond just Java and into the ephemeral support languages and structures commonly used in enterprise applications.

For IntelliJ loyalists, version 8 updates the core editor with new refactorings and code inspections. Also new to this version are tools for working with unit tests, and the new “dataflow to this” command. Both should help developers get a handle on confusing code when debugging.

On the framework and protocol front, IDEA 8 brings Spring support up to date with version 2.5. Included in that support is the ability to deal with Spring Dynamic Modules, all the rage of late in the component-based development crowd. Beyond that, IDEA also brings in support for Jboss Seam.

Just in time for the completion of JSR 311, IDEA also adds support for dealing with and creating RESTful Web services.