Web Development: LLVM
Web development, i.e. HTML/JS/CSS kinda sucks. Really it does.
While on the server side you have free range; we can use nice languages and frameworks (or any of these for anyone of a more lambda persuasion). We can use scripting languages where they make sense, and opt to use a fully compiled and typed language when and if the situation calls for it.
On the client side we have… well, just javascript. JavaScript is a great little language to quickly hack something up, and make some nifty gadgets. I even enjoy making them. The problem is that we’re no longer using javascript as that little bit of glitter to make websites shiny. JQuery, Prototype, and other AJAX libraries provide a small extension to our honeymoon period with javascript, but now we’re wondering if he can still provide for our family. We’ve been using it to build full fledged applications, and this is where it gets gross.
Annoyances with Android: MediaPlayer [Part 1]
For the past six months I’ve been a member of Grooveshark’s Android team. Before working on the Android project I was a Flash and Flex developer, working on the main Grooveshark web application and was moved to Android to, as I recall, help fix some of the problems with the 1.0 version of the application. Soon after joining the Android team my team member and I decided that the best way to fix 1.0 was to completely scrap it and start over. Many of the problems in the first version were because of some fundamental design decisions that did not fit well with the Android platform and to fix these problems would almost necessitate a complete rewrite either way.
HTML Eats Babies and Spits Hot Fire
HTML5 is fast becoming the new hot thang that all the guys want to fuck. But, like the hot girl: she’s a raging bitch, requires a ton of maintenance, actually is just so-so in bed, and you cannot protect your investment (because she’s open, but remember she has standards). And all the boys want to have their way with her: Google is the new kid on the block, Microsoft the rich kid that wants to buy her, her best friend Mozilla has been holding her hands when time was tough, and now Apple the bad boy because he wants to prove to his gay lover that it’s really over.
The Openness of Flash
Thanks to Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash post, there’s been a whole new flurry of posts on the subject of flash vs html5, this time with some focus on the issue of openness, since Steve made such a point to bring that up.
Some people have already pointed out that Adobe has been moving Flash to be more and more open over time, including the open screen project, contributing tamarin to Mozilla, and Flex being completely open source. That’s all well and good, but people seem to be forgetting that historically, Flash had a very good reason for being closed. If one remembers back to the early days of the web, the wild west era as I do since it was such an exciting time for a young whippersnapper like me, one must only think back to what happened to Java to realize why making Flash closed was a very smart move.