JavaScript apps with SproutCore

Installed the SproutCore Ruby gem this evening and I'm starting to play around with SproutCore. More information about SproutCore can be found at http://www.sproutcore.com. SproutCore uses Ruby and some other Ruby gems (Mongrel, Merb, and others) to help you build and test JavaScript apps. Apple is using this for their Mobile Me service. Looks really interesting and so far the examples are pretty cool.

Valuing simplicity

I've been reading Douglas Crockford's JavaScript: The Good Parts. A good read, especially if you've done JavaScript in the past and didn't think much of it at the time (like myself). It's been an eye opening read. One of his lines in the book, "We value simplicity, ..." struck a chord with me. A very simple statement, but it sums up something that I hold very dear to my heart these days.

I value simplicity. A lot. That's why I think I like my Mac so well, after working with Windows and Linux. I like Windows because it's familiar, but there are so many options, and the options seem to change in every Windows release. The reliability of Windows also is a concern. Linux just isn't simple...it's not designed to be simple nor do it want to be. That's good for some situations, but terrible if you want to appeal to the masses. The Mac and other Apple products appeal to the masses due to simple by stylish designs.

I'm not finding all this AJAX, JavaScript, and DOM manipulation simple in design. It's quite the opposite. It's seems very messy and chaotic using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for building web applications. And the interfaces that are being built still pale in comparison to rich applications. Hopefully things get better over time with the RiA technologies (Flex/Flash, Silverlight, etc.).

Extra-lazy collection fetching in Hibernate

I came across some new functionality in Hibernate recently, extra-lazy collection fetching. This functionality, which seems oddly named, basically allows you to initialize individual list or map items, if you have everything configured in Hibernate just right. The details of my spike solutions are written up on my wiki:

http://sites.google.com/a/pintailconsultingllc.com/java/hibernate-extra-lazy-collection-fetching

For small lists, I would recommend not using this functionality, as every item is a SQL call to the database. For a large list or child objects which are expensive to create, this might be just what you're looking for. It took me a while to get the list semantics to work properly. The @IndexedCollection is very important. I have not played with a map collection yet, but in theory that collection should work similarly.

Hall monitor tests

Hall monitor tests are tests included in your unit and integration test suites that ensure that coding conventions are followed. They codify and automate the tribal wisdom of the development group. I used them very effectively on a .NET project about a year ago. Kudos to Joe Muraski, Brad Hill, and Bob Schultz for their efforts with "hall monitor" tests.

kuler - Adobe's fabulous color picker/theme organizer tool

If you ever need to do any styling and need a set of colors for a theme, check out Adobe kuler tool. A Flash-based web tool that is simply amazing. Free for use; just log in with your Adobe ID and you're off and running.

http://kuler.adobe.com/