Noel Rappin Writes Here

It’s not exactly part five of the four part GWT series, but it is closely related. Please check out my newest article on IBM Developerworks: Simplify Ajax development using Cypal Studio for GWT. I actually wrote this a few months ago, when the tool was still called Googlipse, and the final publication was delayed a bit while I rechecked all the code and instructions, and changed the name throughout. One note: it seems as though the GWT 1.

I posted a version of this to JJ Behrens’ Blog post about Ruby, and decided it was probably worth also posting here. I use and like both Ruby and Python, here’s why… Things I like about Ruby with respect to Python I think Ruby is the only language that gets accessors right. The thing you want to do 95% of the time – simple access – is trivial, and the thing you want to do 5% – something fancy in your accessor – of the time is a pretty easy override.

I think I’ll have to join in the general chorus of the underwhelmed. Bullet points: The new desktop and finder sure look shiny. The dock stacks do look kind of useful, and having a dedicated downloads folder strikes me as a classic kind of Apple UI move. Having the finder be visually similar to iTunes strikes me as, on balance, a good idea. And, although I don’t find Cover Flow tremendously useful in iTunes, I can see a place for it in the Finder.

Due to circumstances somewhat beyond my control, I find myself working in the largest Perl project I’ve ever done. Now, I’m not in the least interested in a “my language is better than your language” deal because a) this strikes me as very well covered territory, and b) it seems particularly pointless as the Perl 6 team appears to be doing a nice job of taming Perl’s more rococo features.

Couple thoughts on Apple’s first foray into the brave world of non-DRM’d music: I think the most of the user experience in iTunes is handled nicely. There had been some worry about this – I seem to recall some speculation before the EMI announcement that Apple would only take out DRM if they could do it store-wide, and keep things simple. Anyway, the iTunes Plus branding and the simple option to either always or never see the plus songs seems to work just fine.