Apple:
We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.
Sweet. I’m hoping this results in a slew of how-to blog posts and the like. Visit site »
A tee shirt describing most of the SQL queries on my tumblelog pages. Via Rex, who provides me all my great tee-shirt links. Visit site »
Adam Gomaa explains the Python property built-in and some clever ways to use it with Django. I particularly like the caching-of-URLs suggestion at the end of the article. Visit site »
Guido, Python’s creator and programmer God, has this to say about Django:
Django is still my favorite — not only is it a pretty darn good web framework that matches my style of developing, it is also an exemplary example of a good open source project, run by people who really understand community involvement.
That’s a solid endorsement. Via Jacob. Visit site »
John Allsop wonders aloud whether or not most iPhone native apps should be web apps, instead. Although I don’t really share John’s lack of enthusiasm for native iPhone apps in general, I definitely think he has a point. Many of the best apps on the iPhone are simply interfaces to web content. Many of them don’t offer any real advantages over a similar web app. Developers would be wise to still consider the web app direction as a possibility, unless they specifically need to access native functionality such as the camera or location data — web apps are more compatible, more distributable, and arguably easier to develop. Visit site »
I don’t know many other languages well, but I do know that Python was the first language that ever really made sense to me — and I attribute that, in large part, to the clean syntax and large collection of included and third-party libraries. Visit site »
Looks like a new new resource for learning Python. Visit site »
October 24th, 2007, 6 PM in Seattle, WA
There are several Django-related sessions at PyCon, which is taking place this March in Chicago. Visit site »
Python library to turn MS characters (like smart quotes) and ISO-Latin characters into ASCII, dammit (or HTML, dammit). Very useful. Thanks, Matt. Visit site »
Frank is one of the most brilliant people I’ve had the pleasure to work with (he used to work for The World Company, although not in the same division as me), and here he spouts off fountains of accurate information about hiring programers. I would suggest that basically everything he says is equally applicable to designers. You’ll probably also want to read Frank’s follow-up, which he posted after the article got Dugg and Slashdotted.
For my part, I would say that I think Frank is 100% right, but I would also say this: having been on two different teams now that I would say are basically full of experts, I can say this: there is a downside. The upsides are obvious, and Frank goes over them in his writing. The downside is simply that experts don’t want to do bitch work. And, every company has bitch work. Someone has to do the bitch work. So while I totally agree with Frank that companies should spend more time trying to get real experts, I would also caution against not having any junior or entry level people to handle the bitch work. Visit site »
Speaking form personal experience, I can say that I fully agree with this piece. Blogs engines are great learning tools: everyone understands what one is and how it typically works, everyone has their own ideas of “custom” things they want from their blog engine, and the basic logic involved is not particularly complicated. Visit site »
On his very cleverly-designed blog, Greg Bowers, wonders aloud about the notable absence of any Django-related podcasts, and nominates me to host one. Apparently he hasn’t heard my voice.
Still, I kind of like the idea… Visit site »
Good stuff for those new to Python and wanting to conform to conventions. Also, I’ve always thought the Zen of Python poem (which is included in this piece) could just as aptly be a designer’s mantra. Visit site »
Steve Jobs himself went on about how much greater “real” iPhone apps are than web-based apps at D5. A few days later, at WWDC, he told Mac developers that writing web-based apps for the iPhone was a “very sweet solution.” Huh? Visit site »
Freaking awesome. Here’s hoping they add DO NOT WANT for exception handling. Visit site »
Stuart Colville gets his feet wet with Python by building a simple Twitter client. Fun. Visit site »
I wish I could go, just for Developing Cocoa Applications with Python and Ruby. It’s so awesome that Apple is making these two languages first-class Cocoa development environments with Leopard. I really hope they take off. Visit site »
This quick O’Reilly blog post notes a very important point: people are looking for cookie-cutter solutions to the CMS problem. Adrian Holovaty wants to set them straight; you need a CMS for your data, and that can’t be provided by an off-the-shelf CMS.
People often ask me, for example, if they can use the code for my personal CMS. They’re missing the point. The personal CMS I’ve written is very much tailored to me — it wouldn’t be very useful to you. You need one tailored to you, just like I need one tailored to me. The same holds true for professional-level CMSes. Our Ellington CMS works well as a news publishing platform because it’s uniquely tailored to what news organizations do and the kind of data they deal with. It wouldn’t be very efficient, say, for powering a personal website. Cookie-cutter solutions just don’t work very well in most cases.
Luckily, Django makes it very easy for you to “roll your own”. :) Visit site »
There are a lot of bad things about being stuck on Windows, but the worst one I can think of is not having TextMate (by far the single application I use most on my Mac). E - TextEditor aims to solve the problem (albeit with a really silly name). Visit site »