Creator of Ruby on Rails Interviewed

David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails, a hugely successful web application development framework, is interviewed by O'Reilly Network. He didn't name any single innovation that is the reason of the success. I would add one for him here.

People have been frustrated by the state of the art of J2EE. Finally they have realized not only do they not want EJB and but they don't even need EJB, along with other unnecessarily complex and suboptimally designed technologies collectively dubbed J2EE. The timing of Ruby on Rails is perfect. Its biggest innovation is it gives simplicity (and thus productivity) back to developers so that we can get our jobs done quickly. These days I still hear people mourn over the time they have to waste between restarts of WebLogic and Websphere. Life doesn't have to be that way. The simple approach may topple the incumbent in the not so distant future, too. Hint: JDK 6 includes Rhino (JavaScript on Java).

What do you think is the best feature of Ruby on Rails?

Of the People, by the People, for the People

The Internet as a news medium seems to be changing rapidly. If you look at today's CNet piece on Google Talk, it's obvious it is just a summary of reports in various blogs. It looks like the traditional media will be complemented (or maybe even threatened when the tipping point is reached) by the grassroots reports. Here is some other discussion. They even have news produced by citizen journalists in Korea. But what do you think? Take the poll below.

Where do you get most of the news that you are most interested in?

TV Traditional newspapers Online newspapers Blogs Other

Disruptive Languages Toppling Java from Lower End?

The Innovator's Dilemma is a great book. It talks about how disruptive new technologies, though interior in many ways at first, repeatedly topple powerful incumbents in many different fields. Jason Hunter has a great post on this phenomenon happening to Java. It's real. Why? Because the number of people disgusted with the state of (complex) art of building (web) applications has been slowly increasing and is approaching a tipping point.

My own predictions:

• Java, the language, will relegate to the C++ status in the not-so-distant future.
• JVM, as a portable and fast virtual processor, will continue to flourish with many implementations.
• Dynamic languages such as Ruby, Python, JavaScriptand others (maybe even Smalltalk and Lisp) , coupled with simple frameworks, will thrive to replace the cumbersome J2EE way of building applications. They will also improve rapidly to close in on any gaps with Java (the language and huge class library (or they can just reuse some of those libraries)).

Of course I am talking about the common case. There are even people using C++ today. I am glad this trend is gathering momentum quickly. I have been longing for simplicity for years.

Approaches to RIA

Here is a good list of different approaches to Rich Internet Applications.

Pasting Multi-Line URLs in Firefox

I have been longing for this feature and finally found it today. Here is how to paste a multi-line URL in Firefox. Should work in Mozilla too. The about:config way makes it immediately effective.

Browser Shares: Tide Turning?

If browser share stats of this blog are any indication, the tide is turning. Here is the break-down:

1. Mozilla family (Firefox, Mozilla and Netscape): 60%
2. IE (5, 6 and 7): 32%
3. Safari: 6% (which coincides with the Mac OS X share, no surprise)

Or maybe the people who like this blog are like its author :).