From a session detail of this year’s WWDC:
Discover why Mac OS X is the dream development platform for Ruby on Rails, a powerful and agile web development framework that comes bundled with Mac OS X Leopard. By combining Xcode with the power of Ruby on Rails, you’ll learn how to create unified, first-class web applications that are simple to deploy on Mac OS X Server and that display and perform exceptionally in Safari on Mac OS X, Windows, and iPhone.
I would like to have a Spanish-English dictionary. Anyone?
An impressive passage that I read today.
For all the times we’ve heard “it’s not technology that’s bad, it’s just how we use it,” we’ve been proven wrong. The current medium of computer software engenders the message that we can be lazy. We don’t have to remember names or numbers or spellings anymore. We don’t have to observe, question, or think anymore. We can just search and browse and copy and paste. We don’t have to face problems; we can close and delete and filter them. Patience has been made obsolete. Wisdom has been externalized to the extent that we’ve gone bankrupt internally.
The software that I’m posting on this page is different. It exists to enrich the creative commons. It seeks to elevate rationality with social-environmental responsibility. Ultimately, it aims to increase the level of cognition and compassion in humans—not computers.
The State of Web Development 2006/2007. A 53-page survey and analysis of web development.
I’ve been calulating how much I spend on technology a year.
I also buy iWork and iLife almost yearly, although their production cycle is no longer one release a year. I’m thinking about starting .mac if it gets interesting. That’s $99.95/year. Needless to say, I spend $129 for a new OS biyearly.
Reading Japanese magazines is very important to know what’s on among Japanese web users and web engineers. Spending $440 for the online bookshelf is, eventally, a cut back since getting Engligh books in Japan via Amazon is often more expensive than in US.
Time and money is a trade-off. A lot of resorce I get from books are likely avaiable free on the web, but not with the same quality and ease-of-avaiablity.
This is a lot. Do I need to cut back? How much does average Joe spend a year?
If you have a product blog or development blog, write your views on BitTorrent technology. You’ll be amazed at how many visitors come to your website by searching “[your software name] torrent” and “[your software name here] for mac”.
Cyndicate is a great RSS reader application with nice interface. If you liked Pulp Fiction (app, not movie), you will like this app too. Personally I still prefer NewsFire as my main RSS reader but here you go:
The original version was created by Adam Betts, and another designer took over the icon design and ripped it off. I think the designer who took over the project should have avoided the same location of the RSS icon, at least.
The developers shouldn’t have showed Adam’s icon to the second desinger.
Update: Erik was a guy behind Freshly Squeezed Software, which is gone now. He comments on MacUpdate that PulpFiction customers will be able to get a discount, but he hasn’t set the price yet. This is a great marketing, isn’t it? How loyal is he to customers? How about past customers?
By the way, I’m not sure but you can still purchase Freshly Squeezed Software products? Try pressing Buy link. You can also read great comments by other users.
This app has been seriously outclassed by almost every competitor and isn’t worth any payment since it is not actively developed any more.
The developer does not reply ever, which is also true for their other main product, MailDrop.
This company is a rip-off.
Another:
No product support, meagre features and crash prone: they have no business asking people for money for this app.
One more:
the developer is slow to respond to comments, concerns, and bugs, and has a serious negative attitude when responding; the program is slow; it crashes more than it should; and it has been simply outclassed by other applications.
Update 2: Okay. I wasn’t aware of the fact that FSS was sold to another guy over two years ago. Thanks Erik for commenting.
Well, I had written a long description as to why the developer behind this software doesn’t deserve to make a cent off of this, but Joel deleted it because he didn’t like the label I applied to Erik (the developer). Basically, Erik’s the most arrogant, egotistical, [censored] I’ve ever had the misfortune to run in to. He did some pretty rude, nasty stuff and lied about it later on his blog (and banned me from comments). If you care to read what happened, go to [http://kevin.sb.org]. If you read the few snippets he talked about on his own blog, be warned that he has some lies there.
In a nutshell, Erik booted me off of the Beta team with no warning or reason (only way I knew I was kicked off was because I couldn’t log into the bug reporter to report the fact that PulpFiction leaked 91000 leaks (yes, 91 THOUSAND) for over 100MB of lost memory in the course of 2 days - a sure sign of shoddy development). When I contacted him later about it, he was extremely rude and refused to give me a single reason why he kicked me off, aside from, basically, “because”. He also wasted a full day of my time with PHP+MySQL programming for a PulpFiction v1.1 feature backend that he decided he no longer wanted (at the same time as he kicked me off the team) with, again, no reason given. And given that he obviously wants this v1.1 feature, he’s going to have to recode the thing himself (I had finished it when he told me he didn’t want it). He did more than just tell me he didn’t want it, but this is long enough already, so just go read the story at [http://kevin.sb.org].
Basically, Erik doesn’t deserve a cent of your money. Use PulpFiction Lite if you have to, but don’t pay for this.
Oh, and NetNewsWire 2.0 is much better anyway (still in beta tho). >(5/16/2004, Version: 1.0)
Nicely written.
Plus, Erik seems to have had a copyright issue in 2004 about use of CSS code. Two copyright issues in just 3 years. Coincidence?
Google is my friend. I got too many hits about him. But, what he has written to this blog and your short time surfing via Google for his name should give us a good impression about him. As he writes, “Essentially, Brad Miller (formerly of Freshly Squeezed Software) writes the code, and I do almost everything else.” (where “I” mean Erik, of course).
Stuff written about him and written by him on the net is awesome resources when you judge if you pay for his app(s) or not. I’m guessing “almost everything else” includes customer support. Can’t wait to see more comments on VersionTracker and MacUpdate coming.
To readers: Buy a copy of their products and let me know how you feel about the quality of the product and support.
David Heinemeier Hansson in “What if I actually like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript?”:
As a web developer, I’d like to confess my deep appreciation of the restricted canvas that we get from the basics of the web. We’ve entered an era where the browsers are good enough, compatible enough, and, most importantly, our understanding of how to use what we got has been raised to a level where things are finally looking pretty good.
He also contitunes:
On the user experience side of things, we’re not even close to tapping out the potential of HTML. The majority of web sites and applications still suck. And if most developers and designers can’t make a clean run with the training wheels and constricted playground of HTML, then we probably are in no rush to start playing with a Ducati on the Autobahn.
I agree. As we are never satisfied with the status quo of the web, we should do what we can in the status quo.
(Via Signal vs. Noise.)
Madebysofa Does It with Python and Cocoa in the ADC article:
Using Python and the PyObjC bridge gives you the best of all worlds—Python and Cocoa. Python is great for unit testing and agile development. Because Checkout manages critical business information, we swear by writing unit tests for everything that even comes close to any financial data. And since Python is interpreted and not compiled, launching a debug session takes seconds. You can make a modification and see the effect of the change immediately.
They are European. They also mention localization as an advantage of Mac OS X software development. The company name, Madebysofa, might not be well-recognized, but they are the guys who made a much controversial app, Disco. The UI and icons are made by Jasper Hauser of Camino and Adium fame. They are the “Delicious Generation”.
It’s no secret that the entire Ruby on Rails core team uses OS X as their preferred development environment. Because of this, it is very easy to find authoritative information on the web about using Rails on OS X. But the truth is that Windows developers using Rails probably outnumber those using other platforms. A Windows development environment can be just as productive as any other platform. This is a guide to developing with Ruby on Rails under Windows. It won’t teach you how to write Ruby on Rails web applications, but it will show you what tools to use and how to set them up to create a complete Rails development environment.
I quickly scanned the content of this 60-page book. This is fairly useful for me, who is starting to learn Windows and Ruby on Rails. Just scanning made me think that Macs are better on Ruby on Rails development. But, there are people who want to use Mac at work, but they can’t simply get the permission from their boss. And, unfortunately, I will be the one of them.
(Via Safari Bookshelf.)
