Beans for sale

Well, a lot has happened since I stuck my last post. I got a google+ account up and running. Google also decided to do some integration with blogger and google+ so we'll see how that works out(just applied that about a minute ago). I meant to come back and write more. I really did. However, as I am my only audience, I decided I could damn well wait to read the update about my life or thoughts or whatever this is or will be. It's an organic process. It is a new modality. Modality is not a word according to google. But then, neither is google.

What else has happened? Oh right, I forgot...Oracle can kiss my ass. that's what happened.

If you know me, you know how much I love Java. I advocate the everloving shit out of it. Every time I hear some older developer that used it way back when talk shit about it and about how much better some other language is(usually C#), I explain how far it's come. I talk about how Spring and Hibernate have changed that game so drastically that they wouldn't recognize their complaints. Compiler and runtime improvements. The whole nine yards. I tell them pound for pound it is a fantastic server-side single language solution. Not just because of the work that Sun has done, but because of the work that they have allowed the open source community to perform through their setup.

And then Android happened.

Fuck you Oracle. You had to fucking do it, didn't you? You just had to try and strangle a piece of that action out. Over what? Nine lines of fucking exception throwing? EXCEPTION HANDLING?!

Fuck you whores.

So now I am learning about Ruby and Rails and putting the Ruby on the Rails. This is of course in addition to learning the ins-and-outs of the C# world, which is very similar but different enough at times. Some things about it I find are superior to the Java way, some things are less so. But I still refuse to allow a technology that is blatantly single platform become my primary language. And no, Mono doesn't count as a multi-platform fix. Python is nice, but even though it is sold as platform independent, options for a good Windows solution are limited and too often quirky. So on to Ruby. If that works out to be like Python, then I don't know where I'll look. Maybe Scheme/Lisp. I did enjoy the little bit of work I did with Scheme, and I found the logic very intuitive. Regardless, it won't be fucking Java. Not if this is how it is.

Oh and I didn't get a Chromebook. I splurged and financed an MX11 and tricked it out. It is what I'm using now actually. Like right now. No shit.

Push the cloud?

There's just something about the cloud that intrigues me nowadays. This is a bit of a shift for me as the shape of things to come is web apps. I've always hated developing web apps. It's irrational, maybe...but there it is. There's something about designing and developing a thick-client interface that always made me happy. The ability to build a frame made of frames made of frames, etc. and on and on seems so elegant in theory and in practice. I've gotten over the hate (working in web development for a few years will do that), however I still can't help but feel that html/xhtml/dhtml interface design is inferior in some meaningful ways. I could be wrong, I often am, or at best only part-right.

Part of the issue I have with web apps is apparent in the last paragraph...
"html/xhtml/dhtml".

The concept of Standards is a simple one. And yet how many freaking standards are there for interface design on the internet? I mean you have these three, and then you have the various css standards, and then you have browsers which are compliant with this one but not that one and this browser is compliant with only parts of this standard and good freaking grief. It's not unworkable, but it is frustrating from time-to-time. I get that it's nice to not force users of your application to install software(unless you incorporate flash or java applets...oops). But when I write a thick gui, I at least know what my standards are.

But back to the cloud. I want a Chromebook. I really, really really do. Which is why the whole web app thing is conflicting. I also want to be able to do some light coding on any machine I own. So I'm poking around looking at cloud ide's and whatnot. I've found 2 that look promising but they both have that foreboding BETA word plastered here and there. Cloud IDE has a google app, which is nice for the whole chromebook integration, I had some issues setting up a Java project, we'll see about that one. Kodingen is another, but I haven't been to poke around in there at all yet. They have a decent bit of user interaction on their site, which is a nice touch. Maybe I'll mess around with that over the weekend.