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Palm Ares: an online IDE for WebOS development

By tim, on February 8th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I spent a few minutes trying out Ares, Palm’s web-based IDE for WebOS, the OS used in the Palm Pre smartphone.

Ares is in public beta and I’m not going to pretend I found it smooth going. No doubt it will be fine after a little patient learning. It is amazing, with drag-and-drop visual interface builder,

…continue reading Palm Ares: an online IDE for WebOS development

Technology trends: Silverlight, Flex little use says Thoughtworks as it Goes Google

By tim, on January 11th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Today Martin Fowler at Thoughtworks tweeted a link to the just-published Thoughtworks Technology Radar [pdf] paper, which aims to “help decision makers understand emerging technologies and trends that affect the market today”.

It is a good read, as you would expect from Thoughtworks, a software development company with a bias towards

…continue reading Technology trends: Silverlight, Flex little use says Thoughtworks as it Goes Google

COM automation in Silverlight 4 is not an “edge case”

By tim, on November 23rd, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

I wrote a piece for The Register about the arrival of Windows-specific features in Silverlight, which attracted some comments both on the Reg and also on Slashdot. Plenty of people said it was just what they expected from Microsoft, some of them misunderstanding the point that this only applies to out-of-browser applications that are trusted:

…continue reading COM automation in Silverlight 4 is not an “edge case”

IntelliJ IDEA goes free and open source

By tim, on October 16th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

Yesterday JetBrains announced that its core product, the IDEA IDE for Java, is becoming open source under the Apache 2.0 license. There will be a free Community Edition and a commercial edition with more features. This list of additional features not in the free edition is rather extensive, including UML class diagrams, code coverage, Android

…continue reading IntelliJ IDEA goes free and open source

Intel gets into the App Store game – but where does Silverlight fit in?

By tim, on September 22nd, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

Intel has announced its Atom Developer Program including a new app store. The idea is to encourage a flow of applications that are well suited to netbooks, rather than general desktop applications that tend to get pressed into service because they are there, but may not be well suited to the smaller screen and more

…continue reading Intel gets into the App Store game – but where does Silverlight fit in?

Eclipse survey shows Windows decline

By tim, on June 30th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

In May 2009 the open source Eclipse project surveyed its users. Visitors to the Eclipse site were asked to complete a survey, and 1365 did so. That’s out of around 1 million visitors, which shows how much we all hate surveys. Anyway, this report [pdf] was the result. A similar survey [pdf] was carried out

…continue reading Eclipse survey shows Windows decline

The end of Sun’s bold open source experiment

By tim, on April 21st, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

This is a sad day for Sun. It sought to re-invent its business through open source; and the experiment has failed, culminating not in a re-invigorated company, but instead acquisition by an old-school proprietary software company, Oracle.

It is possible to build a successful business around open source software. Zend is doing it with PHP; Red

…continue reading The end of Sun’s bold open source experiment

RIA (Rich Internet Applications): one day, all applications will be like this

By tim, on April 16th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

I loved this piece by Robin Bloor on The PC, The Cloud, RIA and the future. My favourite line:

Nowadays very few Mac/PC users have any idea where any program is executing.

And why should they? Users want stuff to just work, after all. Bloor says more clearly than I have managed why RIA is the future

…continue reading RIA (Rich Internet Applications): one day, all applications will be like this

Google’s cut-down Java: wanton and irresponsible, or just necessary?

By tim, on April 15th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

Sun’s Simon Phipps stirred things up last weekend when he called Google’s actions wanton and irresponsible. Its crime: delivering a cut-down Java library for use on its App Engine platform, “flaunting the rules” which forbid creating sub-sets of the core classes.

It does sound as if Google is not talking to Sun as much as it

…continue reading Google’s cut-down Java: wanton and irresponsible, or just necessary?

Tim Bray’s contrarian views on Rich Internet Applications

By tim, on March 24th, 2009 Follow tim on Twitter

There’s a though-provoking interview with Sun’s Tim Bray over on the InfoQ site. One of his points is that Rich Internet Applications aren’t worth the hype. He says that web applications are generally better than desktop applications, because they enforce simplicity and support a back button, and that users prefer them. He adds:

Over the years

…continue reading Tim Bray’s contrarian views on Rich Internet Applications

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