Raible Designs

Tech Meetup Thursday in Boston

From the comments in my last entry, it looks like there's a few folks interested in a "geek dinner" on Thursday in Boston. I don't really like to call them "geek dinners" because the name makes me think of a bunch of social misfits sitting around talking about bytecode manipulation. IMO, a better name is "tech meetup" - which follows the line of thinking we have for our Denver Tech Meetups: meet somewhere, drink some beer, eat some food - and talk about whatever.

If you're interested, leave a comment on this post and we'll try to come up with a good location. I'm game for anything - so I'll let you locals pick the spot. How does 7:00 Thursday night sound?

Made it to Boston

I had a nice uneventful trip to Boston today. It snowed in Denver last night, so I got up and headed to the airport a few hours early. I was rewarded with hardly any traffic and a seat on a standby flight. Emily was on the same flight, which made it easier to navigate this place once we arrived. It's been rainy and dreary since we got here, but it sure looks like a nice place. Dinner at Legal Sea Foods is highly recommended.

I got to talk to the kids via webcam tonight, which was nice. Too bad none of them work very well (where's Skype 2.0 for OS X!?). Before I left, I got Yahoo working - but there's no voice. iChat doesn't work - even when I do both Macs in the same room using Bonjour. I'd like to blame my iSight, but Yahoo works fine b/w the Macs. Oh well, at least I can see the little munchkins.

The Ajax Experience Redux

When I found out about The Ajax Experience, I was a little disappointed.

This is a show I'd love to attend. However, it ends the day before Mother's Day - WTF is up with that?! For those of us who happen to be family men and are planning on attending JavaOne, this sucks. If I want to attend The Ajax Experience, I'd have to fly back on Sunday and then fly back to San Fran on Monday for JavaOne. Booo hisss. Looks like I'll be missing this show.

I'll admit, I sounded like a winey little beotch when I wrote this. In reality, the opportunity to go to two shows in the same town in San Francisco is a dream come true. And some how, some way, I've managed to get Julie's blessing to do this. It's her birthday that Saturday, and Mother's Day that Sunday - yet I'm free and clear to goof off in San Francisco with a bunch of geeks. I love this woman.

Are you going to JavaOne? What about The Ajax Experience? If you're going to be in San Francisco that weekend, let me know - maybe we can grab a brewski at the Thirsty Bear.

Jetty 6 Maven Plugin now works with SiteMesh (and Equinox)

The 1.6 version of Equinox contains commented-out settings for Maven 2 Jetty Plugin. The reason these are commented-out is because this plugin didn't work with SiteMesh at the time. I checked again today, and it looks like they got it fixed. See Brett's post titled Developing with Jetty: Where Have You Been All My Life? to see why this plugin is so cool.

Using this plugin (or the JettyLauncher in Eclipse) makes it pretty damn easy to do develop Java webapps. There's no longer a deploy cycle, just save and refresh your browser. IMO, it's almost as good as using a scripting language or developing with HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

I'd love to see someone develop a TomcatLauncher, a WinstoneLauncher and Maven 2 Plugins for both. AppFuse works with Winstone 0.8.1 (a wicked fast servlet container with a good story behind its name).

In other Jetty news, Jan Bartel posted a nice tutorial today titled How To Use JOTM as the XA Transaction Manager in Jetty6.

Struts is (far and away) most popular web framework deployed on JBoss

From this month's JBoss Newsletter:

These results are certainly interesting. My guess is most "Other" frameworks are ones developed in-house.

Does this means I shouldn't ditch Struts 1.x support in AppFuse 2.0? Possibly, but since AppFuse works best for starting new applications - it makes sense to say "use the good stuff or you're on your own."

TSSJS BOF: Web Framework Sweet Spots

I'm leading a BOF at this year's TSS Java Symposium titled Web Framework Sweet Spots.

The objective of this BOF is to discuss the various open source web frameworks and what each does well. Matt kicks off the discussion by highlighting the good features of various frameworks, (results of pre-conference discussions with various framework authors to get their opinions on what problems their framework solves best) as well as debunk some myths based on audience members real-world experiences.

Yesterday, I sent an e-mail the authors of the most popular web frameworks in JavaLand. In my opinion, these are (in alphabetical order): Cocoon, JSF, RIFE, Seam, Spring MVC, Spring Web Flow, Struts, Trails, Tapestry, WebWork and Wicket. If your framework isn't on this list, I'm sorry. If you can prove to me that yours is more popular than one of the ones listed here, I'll send you the questionnaire and add you to the list. I've received a few responses, and I doubt all authors will respond, so there might be some room.

If you're going to be at Caesar's Palace for TSSJS 2006, I invite you to stop by on Friday night at 6:30. I've asked the TechTarget folks several times about getting beer served at this BOF, but they keep ignoring the question. I think it's time to contact Caesar's - since it is legal to have a beer pretty much anywhere in Vegas.

Riding to work in the rain

Today is a cold n' dreary day in Denver. It's been raining since about 8:00 this morning and it's supposed to turn to snow by this evening. Did that stop me from riding my bike to work today? Hell no! There's nothing like riding in cold rain to make you feel alive.

We have a SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW ADVISORY in effect through 6pm for the I-25 corridor and Denver Metro Area. Heavy, wet snow for the downtown Denver Metro Area with 1-4 inches on the grassy areas by this evening. Roads will get slushy by this afternoon in the Denver Metro Area. Western Douglas, western Jefferson and Boulder counties may see icy and snowpacked roads by later today with colder temperatures and 3 to 6 inches by this evening. We may see 4 to 8 inches above 8000 feet.

My pants and coat were pretty soaked when I got here, but I brought a change of clothes, so I've been nice and dry ever since. I'm heading to the Denver JUG meeting tonight after work. I expect 2-3" of fresh snow on the ride home later tonight. With lots of snow in the hills tonight, tomorrow might have to be a "ski day".

Update: No ride home for me - I forgot my keys in my office when I went to DJUG. No access to the office == no bike ride home. Took a cab instead. Too bad, it didn't snow much and would've been a nice ride.

Developers have the best job in the world

I've often said that being a Software Developer is the "Doctor of The Aughts" - now there's proof.

OpenLaszlo supports Ajaxified output

I heard this was coming, but I didn't expect it so soon.

There has been some crazy, crazy work going on here in the last month or two and the result is amazing. Today at etech, we’re demoing an early alpha of OpenLaszlo’s new DHTML backend. Truth! Press Release!

Here’s a new demo showing off the goods:

• LzPix demo, Flash version
• LzPix demo, DHTML version
• LzPix demo, source code

That’s a live OpenLaszlo server, running both apps from the same source code.

Also, new shiny openlaszlo.org page, with links to the DHTML demo.

This demo definitely works best in Firefox, but it's damn impressive. It's tough to test which medium you're using if you open them side-by-side. My hats off to you OpenLaszlo Developers - well done.

RE: Marketing is the billion dollar question in open source

Dana Blankenhorn has an interesting post titled Marketing is the billion dollar question in open source. I definitely agree with this. Good marketing of a project can make it successful, and bad marketing can kill it. It really is the hardest part of being an open source developer. Sure it's fun to work on this stuff until the wee hours of the morning, but if no one (including yourself) appreciates your project (due to your lack of marketing), it really worth it? Compare that to wild enthusiasm by your users and people writing articles about your project. There's a stark contrast there.

Some of the hottest open source projects are driven by marketing. Read more (and comment) on my Virtuas blog.