Noel Rappin Writes Here

It’s true – the way to get comments on your blog is to mention Apple… I do something like one substantive post in three months, and then two apple posts in 48 hours, and bang! Four comments within a day. I’m surprised, not least because I really wasn’t sure anybody was out there. Anyway, interesting points have been made, and I thought I’d pull them up to either agree, or whine defensively.

What is it about us tech fanboys and Apple… I’ve always found them interesting, even when I wasn’t a regular Mac user. Infuriating, sometimes. But interesting. So here’s another thing about Apple, circa 1995… That was right about the end of something like a two-year period where Apple was way ahead on internet integration and didn’t really make anything out of it. By the time the internet really started to escape out of academia, the Windows world was well on it’s way to catching up, and by the time it all really went mainstream, Macs would be a fading memory.

As I may have mentioned here, back in 1995 I spent three months as a summer intern at Apple HQ in Cupertino. I was buried deep in the educational technology research group so, trust me, I didn’t work on anything you’ve heard of. It was a fun summer, though. They stuffed about 15 of us, a mix of grad students and contractors, in a room that was really long and narrow.

Sorry for not mentioning this earlier, but part three of the GWT series is now up on the IBM site at: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-ad-gwt3/ This one is about remote procedure calls, and I’m pleased with how it turned out. I just got the proofs for the fourth and final article in this series, about deployment. I expect it to be online Tuesday, Feb 27th at: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-ad-gwt4/

A collection of small things, half-finished posts, and pure whatnot that hopefully will lead to more posts in the future: Got my first Amazon affiliate statement with no less than $1.55 heading my way. Thanks to the person who clicked through… There’s a new sidebar, for small links, via del.icio.us. The sidebar has it’s own RSS feed, on the off chance somebody is interested. UPDATE: It doesn’t appear to work on Safari, which is a problem… Weird, because I did the preview using Safari, and it showed up fine, but not in the actual blog.

The second part of my IBM Developerworks series on Google Web Toolkit is now online at http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-ad-gwt2/. This one focuses mostly on the Derby database, and features a really quick and dirty database-to-Java conversion tool. Enjoy.

This message showed up in the Manning Sandbox forum for wxPython In Action. After saying some nice things about the book, the poster has some suggestions: I would love to see an advanced volume covering topics such as XRC, using XML to define a screen layout; creating custom widgets… internationalization, and a full chapter or more expanding on chapter 5 “Creating your blueprint.” I find that… program organization is most important yet little seems to be written about it, for any programming language….

I’m happy to announce that Part One of my four part series on using Google Web Toolkit is now available at: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-ad-gwt1/ This part focuses on creating a GUI front-end using GWT. In case you wonder about the lead time on these things, it was originally written in August, and slightly updated right before it was published. I think that the future part of the series will appear monthly. The next one is about using the Derby database as your back-end.

Let me promote this from the comment section – it’s not hard to find, it’s the only comment on the previous post. What is your favorite Python IDE? Your editor choices are interesting and valid but I wondered if you have a preffered IDE for Python and wxPython work? I may have covered this somewhere, either on this site, or in the Python 411 podcast interview. If so, I’m sorry.

Two tools I use all the time. Neither is free, and since my strong bias is to use free tools where possible, these are some really impressive editors. IntelliJ IDEA For all my Java needs. It’s got more features and is more usable than any other Java IDE out there. The only downsides are that it’s not free, and there are about a half-dozen keyboard shortcuts you have to get down before you achieve anything like full Zen mastery (well, and it could be nicer about the way it arranges tabs in the editor).