The Ironism

Sooo, Gaimans Stardust is becoming a movie. Wheee!

But, they show the trailer on Yahoo Movies only. Booo!

But what kind of retarded moron of inbread stupid som-of-a-manager put it on Yahoo Movies, the worst movie site ever to be created?! I mean, mixing Flash and ActiveX (?) to embed Windows Media Player? What a great idea!! NOT!

Let’s see, I’ve got a Windo$e XP at work. Will it work? No, because I need to use MS Interfuck Exploder, and funny enough M$ has fucked it up, so I can’t install Flash on it. Morons. Firefox I have got flash on, but lo’ and behold, the ass-licker incompetent bloody visual basic scripters have made it impossible. Idiots.

Linux+Firefox, no. Linux+Opera, no. Windows+IE7, no (because of flash install). Windows+Opera, no, Windows+Firefox, no.

And I don’t have a Mac at hand. Coffe cup IQ bloody amateurs.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth I finally figred out how to paste the source link of the embedded stream stright into Linux+Firefox and get my MPlayer plugin to fix it. *sigh*

Seems hyped ehough. They seem to have added a lot more action than what I remember from the book. That’s fair enough in my mind, as long as the Gaiman style and pace survives. Stardust is a remarkable book, much thanks to the same said pace and it lovely fairytale-for-grownups groove.

So here’s to hope. Despite the morons at Yahoo+Paramount.

I really don’t understand what all the fuzz is about. The Rational Response Squad makes a PR-bid and challanges people to put a video of themself denying the holy spirit on YouTube, with the incentive that they’ll get a free copy of The God Who Wasn’t There.

Were’s the problem? When PZ links to a defense, the normally thoughtful and readable Orac weights in:

[...] it irritated me because it was just plain immature and silly, not to mention probably based on a false premise. It also inspired truly childish and embarrassing spectacles like the guy who cleaned up dog crap with the pages of the Bible.

Silly? I don’t understand what’s silly with it, it seems like a well executed PR coup to me. It “inspired” childish spectacles? *shrug* I certainly couldn’t care less, the idea that athests are less childish than xians is misplaced, you will get all sorts, good and bad. And even so, who cares? I can point out childish xian behaviour, but I wouldn’t use it in an argument, and I expect any xian wishing to argue with me to do the same.

And “based on a false premise“? Well, yes, perhaps and “probably”. From the article:

The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is making the claim that the works of the Holy Spirit are actually the works of Satan. It has nothing to do with denying the existence of the Holy Spirit [...]

So, if they had said “I deny the work of the holy spirit”, would that have been more palatable? I think not. This sort of defense is slightly emberasing if taken serously. Fortunately I don’t, I think it misses a number key point.

Also I think Greta forgot a key point (although her post is very good, go read it) in why, perhaps The Rational Response Squad, but certainly many of the “childish” posters, are doing it: Because it’s good old entertainment poking fun at authority, even more so when the target can’t at all take it. Is poking fun at authority silly? I don’t think so. Is childish behaviour when poking fun at authority childish? Perhaps, but if the target takes it too seriously, they’re often being just as childish.

And let’s not forget, as Greta points out, that there’s some really good responses in there, just look at the ones she posted for example.

Anyway. I really don’t understand what all the fuzz is about. It seems like good old fun to me.

Hacknot has put together a good article on the rise of the “dynamic” languages as we see it in publiscations all over. Ruby is the new shit. Or, as it may well be, not. Well worth reading.

I liked the article. The points are well made, and I wish I had expressed many of them myself. And it flows with an hilarious sarcastic edge, I read the whole stuff from start and started laughing when I reached the “Conclusion: For Weenies” which brings the irony and sarcasm into a wonderful full front assult.

Oh and by the way, I am:

A brilliant businessman on a quest for world domination and the self-proclaimed greatest criminal mind of our time!

Just thought I’d let you know.

The CD’s

• Alice Cooper, The Last Temptation
• Birgint Nilsson Sings Verdi
• Alanis Morisette, So Called Chaos

Nothing too exciting here. I’ve been slightly in love with Alanis since Jagged Little Pill. And the Cooper album is surprisingly good. If you’re one of those that believes Alice was only good in the seventies, you should give it a chance. Birgit+Verdi is a classic to have, let’s not forget she did not only sing Wagner, shall we?

The DVD’s

• Pain of Salvation, BE
• Montserrat Caballé, Beyond Music
• Dream Theater, Images and Words Live in Tokyo / 5 Years in a Live Time

The Caballé docmentary was very good. I would have wished for more un-intrrupted music though, but it does show without a doubt what an amazing singer she was (and, I’ve no doubt, still is). And what a lovely lady. And what a diva. I love her!

Dream Theater. Live in Tokyo is good. I had it only on VHS before. Live Time, well… I expected the Once in a Live Time album, but on DVD. Of course it isn’t. Hum.. I’m rather dissapointed I’m afraid. I’l give it a chance though.

And PoS, BE. I know very many thinks BE the album is pretty amazing, but I don’t perticulary agree. If nothing else because I did actually see it live, and the album never really could be compared to the full thing. This though, is damn good stuff.

The Books

• Arthur C Clarke, Childhood’s End
• Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines
• Donald A Norman, The Design of Everyday Things
• Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel
• Gaiman / Zulli, The Last Temptation
• The Essential Epicurus Reader (O’Connor)
• Richard Miller, The Structure of Singing
• Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and it’s Enemies

This list I’m quite proud of. And slightly amazed of. It struck me the other night, that the range of topics and styles is quite… Amazing. Otherwise I haven’t got too much to say yet. I certainly haven’t had time to read any of it through. But I’m looking forward to it. Very much.

I should say something about Richard Miller, but that a topic for several posts in itself only. Let’s just say I’m now the proud owner of his magnum opus.

Popper, Epicurus, Diamond and Kurzweil. Nice quartet, don’t you think?

I expect I’ll have things to say about The Design of Everyday Things, at least I’m very much looking foward to reading it.

Of course, Gaiman / Zulli’s temptation goes and in hand with Cooper’s. Looks slightly trivial, but… Damn, its Gaiman and Cooper. At the same time! What can go wrong?!

Numbered geekery here. 30 GMail tricks. And 101 share- and freeware apps.

And whisky! Of course! In a challenge!

And lastly, via the BA, an old link. I read it when it was posted, and I completely agree with Mr Plait, ’tis a brilliant post indeed. What phychics I ask you?

There’s an article on DevX comparing the three major Java IDE’s, picked up by Mats Henricson of Crisp fame, here (SV).

I have a small grief with the article. Nothing major mind you, just a small grief.

To start off though, a small clarification. The article compares the editors in some separate areas – which is comendable – namely Swing, JSP/Struts, JavaServer Faces (JSF), and J2EE/EJB3. Of these the only one I’m at all interested in is EJB3, and when I do code in EJB3 I expect I’ll belong to the “hard coder” line, and do most of it be hand. Hard coder? *shrug* I guess so. (For example: Hibernate/JPA support? What’s the point? It’s not exacly rocket science is it?) So given its constraints, I haven’t got much to say as I don’t expect to have to use those features for quite a while, and don’t mch disagree with it’s conclusions anyway.

But its constraints, I do have something to say about. It seems that every article I glance at comparing editors are written by an author thinking along these lines: “Oh, and Eclipse have all those plugins, how tedious. I’ll mention them and the community and then go on and compare Eclipse without them anyway, that’ll be much easier, and fairer too.” This seems a bit strange to me. You see, I’ll believe that the plugins and the community around them is one of the major contributing factors to why people like Eclipse. Many coders will of course be unable to articulate why they use a particular IDE at all, it is mostly habits, but when you sit down with them I’ll bet you that the plugins are there in the “good bits”-list in 95% of the cases. And if it is so, wouldn’t it be fair to include them?

Take this qoute from the article for example:

Out of the three IDEs, Eclipse is the only one that exists in multiple versions/distributions, starting from the base distribution to pre-packaged ones with extra open-source plugins (such as EasyEclipse) and open-source/commercial hybrids such as Genuitec’s MyEclipse. In order to provide a fairly realistic review of what Eclipse is capable of, I focused on the base distribution (including default Eclipse sub-projects such as the Visual Editor and Web Tools Project). Wherever I felt it was lacking, I also considered what MyEclipse offers as a commercial alternative. Frankly, at a subscription price of $49/year, I’d be hard pressed to find any commercial IDE with the functionality that MyEclipse provides.

“Fairly realistic review”? I don’t understand. So it is ok to use some plugins but not all? Also, if you’re realising that Eclipse is quite a different kind of beast, thanks to the community and the plugins, why do you insist on comparing apples with oranges anyway? Or, why not ingore features from the other two editors instead? Wouldn’t that be even fairer? I mean, the article author does mention that he found 24 (!) different Struts plugins quite easily, but that, somehow, doesn’t count?

Seriously. ’tis silly. If you are evaluating Eclipse, include the plugins. Otherwise, people like me might not take you seriously enough to listen.

That said, I thought it was quite a good article anyway. I’ll stay with Eclipse for a while though. The perspectives/views fits me, I love the debugger, and I really like the platform (inluding the plugins). For example, right know I’m writing a custom launch configuration for my company which will make it amazingly simple to develop multiplayer games on our platform. I just find the ease of which I can extend the IDE functionality really cool.

And, if you didn’t know, OSGI, upon which the entire Eclipse platform is built, rocks.

By way of Pratchetts The Thruth: Enbunned.

Regarding my last post about Spring. The crazed man himself tells me that Google now have released its own IoC framework. Hum… I’ll have to check it out when I get time.

Crazy Bob had a post i January which he got a lot of feedback on, namely: I don’t get Spring. Spring, as in the Java framework of course. He has a lot of specific concerns that I won’t repeat here, but many of them are good.

Introduction
I’m afraid I don’t “get” it either. Religion does that to me, as soon as someone tells me if I would only get it I would understand, I automatically back off, ready to fight. I mean, if I only would let Jesus into my life I would start believe, right? And if I would only start getting Spring I would be a follower too, right?

Yeah, right.

You don’t think it is a religion? Well, try critizising it, and then check what kind of responses you’ll get. (In fact, have you read a critical analyzis of spring at all? Probably not, I know that I haven’t. And that worries me, and apparently Crazy Bob as well, a bit). Or you can read Bobs post and then scan through the comments:

• “I use it and it works for me”
• “If you just get it you would understand”
• “So? Don’t use it then”

And many will testify to the fervor with which Spring advocates jumps at any doubting voice. (Also among the comments, there’s some long sales pitches from Keith from the Spring Web Flow team.)

So why am I sceptical? Well, the religion issue apart, here’s some things about Spring which I question:

• It is not very a light-weight sollution
• Spring does affect you code
• There’s no clear demarcation between code and XML
• Spring XML effectively is another language
• Refactoring and debugging becomes a pain

Let’s take them on, shall we?

Heavy Ball and Chain
Light-weight? Erhm, no, I don’t think so. Light-weight in my book means small, non-intrusive and without any particular runtime impact. Also, I don’t expect light-weight sollutions to have any significant impact on my coding style. And let’s not forget what Bob points out, the public contracts of Spring are very much not light at all (but to their defence, they do have extensive API documentation provided).

Don’t Touch My Code
Contrary to claims, spring does “touch” my code. Just becasuse what injects your dependencies on the right places sits outside your code instead of within it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I mean, how do you start you application? It is correct that no Java code is visible in your project, but this is not necesserally a good thing. And as Bob puts it:

Spring advocates tout that Spring doesn’t “touch” your code, i.e. you don’t have to implement any Spring-specific interfaces (with the exception of life-cycle interfaces, etc.). News flash: the XML configuration *is my code*, and from what I can see it often ends up constituting a lot of code, all of which is Spring-specific.

Demarcation
Where do you draw the line between Spring and Java? If you do it too coarse-grained you don’t particulary need Spring at all, but as you penetrate deeper the amount of XML will grow rapidly, and that will soon become a problem. I have been in projects with fully grown “XML Hell” problems. It. Is. Not. Funny.

Mixing Langauges?
Please read the Bob-qoute a few paragraphs above: XML is code in a Spring project. A “fully Springified” project will most probably, thanks to the demarcation problem, have a lot of XML files in a 3rd party language. In other words, in order to fully understand, and therefore effectively work in, such a project you need to be fluent in Spring. Light-weight? No. Does it affect my code? Yes.

Do I really want projects written in two separate lagauges? Perhaps it isn’t a problem, but you must understand that when you take the Spring step, you are forever relying on dual-language programmers to work on and support it. And large projects tend to live longer than their programmers. That might be a really big problem for any Spring project in the near future. Seriously. What if you can’t find any good Spring programmers to hire? Legacy code is bad enough. Legacy code in an obscure XML language that no-one really uses any more is even worse.

Hard references and strong types
I like strong types. I like hard references. They make my life as a programmer so much simpler. And both of them are negatively affected by Spring. This problem will shrink a bit when IDE’s becomes better at handling Spring files for you. But right now, they’re not up to schratch.

Conclusion
Does this mean I don’t like dependency injection? Not at all. Good programmers do that all the time without the help of any heavy-weight framework. Does this mean I will never use Spring? Not at all. But I consider the above points very important and unless I’m wrong, which of course may well be the case, I’ll probably try to stay away. And to be very, very clear to any Spring zelaot happening to read this: Don’t bother to answer unless you have answers, they’re specific, and to the point. I’m not interested in your religion, I’m interested in writing damn good code.