tim ferro
professional software developer, gen y advocate, blogger, and orator

“The first beta of Red Hat Developer Studio was published yesterday. RHDS seems promising. This IDE is a bunch of Eclipse plugins that comes from the fusion of JBoss IDE and Exadel Studio. The main advantages it offers are: JSF development improved, in particular integrating RichFaces and Ajax4JSF libraries; Seam (next J2EE middleware standard?) integration; and plugins for JBoss, Hibernate… Here are [some] first impressions.” - Source

“In a rare public talk, C++ creator Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup discusses his ideal in programming languages, as well how he sees the next version (and beyond) of C++ developing. He explains the general selection criteria used for adding new features, some of the legacy of C++, and many other interesting topics. Especially interesting is during the Q&A he explains his views of the embrace and extend mentality some implementations, such as VC++, have taken.” - Source

“Projity will release a public beta of OpenProj, a free open-source competitor (of Microsoft Project). Reportedly, OpenProj works with Windows, Linux, Unix, and Mac OsX. Word has it that OpenProj can also open native Microsoft Project files. The Beta will be released on August 7th, the first day of the LinuxWorld San Francisco show.” - Source

A recent poll shows that Vi/Vim/GVim have a dominating 56% user preference. But in a surprising find, Emacs/XEmacs were not the second most popular as one would think from the many Vi vs. Emacs debates. - Source

When I saw this article I just had to post it. Like the author I was also speechless. Enjoy.

http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/My-Kind-of-copyFile.aspx 

“Mozilla could spin Thunderbird off as separate organization” - Source

“Mozilla has been supporting Thunderbird as a product since the beginning of the Foundation. The result is a good, solid product that provides an open alternative for desktop mail. However, the Thunderbird effort is dwarfed by the enormous energy and community focused on the web, Firefox and the ecosystem around it. As a result, Mozilla doesn’t support Thunderbird as much as we do browsing and Firefox and we don’t expect this to change in the foreseeable future. We are convinced that our current focus – delivering the web, mostly through browsing and related services – is the correct priority. At the same time, the Thunderbird team is extremely dedicated and competent, and we all want to see them do as much as possible with Thunderbird.

We have concluded that we should find a new organizational approach for Thunderbird; one that allows the Thunderbird community to determine its own destiny.” - Source, Source

Earlier I reported on the release of Microsoft’s new Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008. Now the development side of the equation is announced officially as betas and RCs.

“Announcing the release of Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, .NET FX 3.5 Beta 2, and Silverlight 1.0 RC” - Source

“Kevin Turner, Micro-soft Corp.’s chief operating officer, said at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver last week that Windows Server 2008 — formerly code-named Longhorn Server — will be launched next February along with upgrades of SQL Server and Visual Studio.” - Source , Second Article

This is going to be a huge launch for Microsoft next year. They are releasing 3 major products at the same time; frankly I can’t wait. Those 3 products make up the best Windows development environment. Throw in Office 2007 and SharePoint 2007 and you’ve got a solid development suite for Windows. Here is ‘Five things to know about Longhorn Server Core‘.

During my honeymoon I read The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary by Eric S. Raymond. This is an incredible book. If you love open source software, this is the book for you. It has great stories about the open source movement, linux, Mozilla, hackers, and more. I would consider this a must read for everyone who works in the computer industry. Everyone from code monkeys, to managers, to CIOs to CEOs, should read this book.