Don Box's Spoutlet

Fowler's DSL Book

Don Box — Sat, 03 May 2008 10:17:00 GMT

I talked to Neal Ford a week or two ago and he mentioned that Martin Fowler is working on a DSL book.

Just found the site here.

Pretty skeletal so far, but I think the underlying ideas are pretty spot on.

Can't wait to see the final manuscript!

Steve Yegge on Emacs

Don Box — Sat, 03 May 2008 10:06:00 GMT

Via Stefan Tilkov:

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/04/xemacs-is-dead-long-live-xemacs.html

I've got no opinion on the GNU-vs-XEmacs analysis. I never used XEmacs for more than a day. I stopped using GNU Emacs in November 2003. I'm sure both version of emacs are even gotten better over the past 4+ years.

Had this just been another installment in the GNU-vs-XEmacs soap opera, there'd be nothing to see here.

Sandwiched between this however are some observations that I think are relevant to anyone who writes programs (start reading from “the dubious future of emacs“).

It's hard to argue with the value of self-hosting.

It's even harder to argue with the momentum of the browser and dynamic environments.

Work

Don Box — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:14:00 GMT

Doug's posted another “we're hiring” missive.

Doug's been running my team for coming up on a year.

Doug has more passion and energy than anyone I've ever worked with.

Getting to work on a team that's building a language and a tool is both exciting and intimidating.

The three most “personal” choices a developer makes are language, tool, and OS.

Working on 2/3rds of that equation is pretty thrilling.

Way more fun than anything else I've ever done with a computer.

Way more fun than blogging, hence the relative silence for the past year or so.

Blast from the past: SOM and DSOM

Don Box — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 19:02:00 GMT

I saw this piece on Slashdot about folks wanting to open-source SOM and DSOM.

SOM lost to the JVM (and the CLR on our side) - although it's interesting to go back and look at the COM/SOM comparisons of that era and replace SOM with CLR.

Fun times.

XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it.

Don Box — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 20:22:00 GMT

This quote isn't mine, it's from the slashdot article on the Future of XML but I just had to reference it.

XML: Done like a well-cooked steak

Don Box — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 20:20:00 GMT

This recent Slashdot post on “The Future of XML” made me think about Ted’s post on Java and doneness.

Personally (not speaking for my employer) XML has achieved Patriot-esque doneness (ignoring last Sunday's disappointment with the Giants).

The format and data model stabilized ages ago (at least internet-scale ages).

The standardization effort went into the errata/sustained-engineering phase years ago.

Most development platforms have moved beyond the W3C’s first (and hopefully last) attempt to define programmatic interfaces.

XQuery seems firmly implanted as a promising technology of the future.

More importantly, XML survived XSD.

Like Java (and C for that matter), XML is a stable and reliable technology that’s pretty much done being changed.

People can bet on it and know exactly what they’re going to get.

The future of XML is more of the same.

Kudos to Bray et al for building something to last.

Chuck Norris bested by "a lack of talent"

Don Box — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:49:00 GMT

Here's the evidence.

Point 1: Now the data points are coming in that the lack of SOA talent is killing SOA. (via David Linthicum)

Point 2: SOA is the only thing Chuck Norris can't kill. (via the encyclopedia of SOA)

Conclusion: A lack of talent can achieve what Chuck Norris can't.

I guess Chuck Norris is just too talented to kill SOA.

The Overfactored Foreword

Don Box — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:31:00 GMT

Chris Sells has decided to reveal the technique I used last year to write the foreword for both his and ChrisAn's books.

If you have both books, read the forewords I wrote.

Note that there is significant reuse between the two forewords (they'd be identical had it not been for an overaggressive editor at AW who added an extra surname).

As is the case with code, it took way more work to craft a general solution to the “foreword for a WPF book written by a guy named 'Chris'” problem than it would have been to simply write two one-off solutions.

And as is often the case with this kind of factoring, the likelihood that I'll be able to reuse it a third time is extremely low.

However, if you are an author of a WPF book and your name is Chris, feel free to send me your manuscript and I'll consider it.

Java and doneness

Don Box — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:14:00 GMT

Ted Neward has an excellent post on the state of Java.

In general, I really like the piece a lot.

I do think Ted slightly misses the point when he talks about Bruce Eckel's statement:

Arguably one of the best features of C is that it hasn't changed at all for decades.

Ted cites C99 and D as flies in that ointment.

I don't buy it.

Just because a standards body can't recogonize done-ness and declare victory, that doesn't mean the fruits of that body have any bearing on reality.

Go look here for evidence. The average C developer doesn't even know C99 exists and probably doesn't care.

And as for D being so much better than C or C++, I would expect D to overtake C adoption right after WS-Transfer replaces HTTP on the public internet :-)

Java has achieved cockroach status and its inventors should be proud.

Mission accomplished.

Lang.net 2008

Don Box — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 18:25:00 GMT

Even though my title and abstract aren't up on the site, I'm giving a talk at Lang.NET 2008 later this month over in Building 20.

Of course, I can't quite get over that we got Dan Ingalls to speak.

Should be fun.