We’ve Moved!
That’s right folks. Please come visit us at the new location:
http://www.tedchoward.com/blog
If you’re into the rss thing, don’t forget to update your feeds.
Time for Bed
I can’t stay up too late tonight, I need to wake up by 7:00, so I can be at work by 8:00. That probably doesn’t seem like a very significant statement. Most of the world will have to be at work by 8:00, but starting a year and a few weeks ago I transitioned to the startup life.
For me this meant a workday that started around 10 and usually went until 11 or so at night. Of course a lot has changed in a year. Where there were originally two, there are now four. More people requires better organization and a little process. Without it, coordination becomes difficult. Where previously working odd hours around the clock was good for productivity, it is now a hindrance to the team building. Especially when all the members are either married or seriously involved.
Megan has of course been on board with me on this venture from the very beginning. I would could not have done this without her support. It isn’t fair to her for me to sleep when she is at work, and then for me to work when she is at home. While that sort of schedule can work for the short term, it increasingly becomes a problem as time passes.
Tomorrow begins a new era for our company. It is day one of having standard office hours. They are longer hours than most companies; but hey, we are a four person internet startup company. It is a shame in some respects. Sleeping in was one of the greatest perks of being self employed, but if this company is going to grow up into something great, then I will have to grow up as well.
Well, that’s all I have time for now. I’m off to bed. I have to get up early tomorrow.
What is TileStack?
This is for everyone who has asked me what I do for a living, and politely nodded while I failed to adequately explain.
The Future of Javascript — Who Cares?!?
Yesterday on Slashdot, someone posted an InfoWorld interview of Brendan Eich (the creator of JavaScript). In the interview he lays out his plans of the evolution of JavaScript into what he calls JS2. The discussion on Slashdot was over the details of whether the language changes made things better or worse. The thing about programmers is that they won’t all agree on anything. Everyone has their own understanding of how software should be written. My critique isn’t on any of the details of the language changes, its the premise itself.
First of all, let me say that I don’t believe JavaScript to be the Holy Grail of languages. It’s not perfect, there are things about it that I find irritating. There are also things about it that I like. This is true of any language with any competent hacker.
Why JavaScript Matters:
More and more software is being designed to run “in the cloud”. The benefits are obvious. Deployment is trivial, as are upgrades. Developing for the web means not having to care about the users’ platforms. Connectivity is becoming faster and more ubiquitous every day. JavaScript matters because it is the language of the web. It excels not on technical merit, but out of necessity.
In the 1990s, Netscape was in a unique position. It essentially owned the web platform. Whatever they decided became standard. When Microsoft built IE, they had to include JavaScript support so their browser could compete. Every new browser since then had to include a JavaScript engine.
In todays market, every computer has a web browser and therefore has a JavaScript engine. JavaScript matters for one reason, and only one reason: it is ubiquitous.
Why JS2 Does Not Matter:
Although Mozilla acts as if they inherited Netscape’s mid 90s status as keeper of the web platform, this is not the case. They say that it doesn’t matter is Microsoft adopts JS2 or not, they’ll just write an IE plugin. This may work to increase JS2 adoption, but it doesn’t actually solve any real problems. JS2 is a solution looking for a problem.
When building TileStack, my main problem with JS isn’t some language feature (native classes, typed variables, etc.) it’s the lack of consistency between browsers. Granted this isn’t something the Mozilla Foundation can fix, but a new version of the JS language does more harm than good in this context.
Why JS2 is Harmful to Mozilla:
While Mozilla has the best of their JavaScript team busy writing new language features, the competition is getting tough. Apple continues to push the limits of WebKit. The next version of Safari will smoke the competition when it comes to JS performance. They are packing so much stuff into the browser, that web developers will start to question the need for Flash. Meanwhile, Mozilla is working on the syntax for the “let” keyword. Hey Mozilla, where’s mobile FireFox? How come the poster boy for open source isn’t part of the first open source mobile phone platform (Android)? Congratulations on all the downloads of FireFox 3. Too bad it’s killer feature is that it doesn’t suck down resources like FireFox 2. Wake up guys, you’re starting to lose!
I guess the point is that language syntax is one of the least important features of a platform. Do developers use .Net for C#’s syntax? Is Objective-C’s syntax the reason for Apple’s recent successes? Will the declarative structure of JavaFX Script save the Java platform? I could go on with more examples, but I wont. The answer is a resounding NO! There are much more important things to ensuring the success of a platform than language syntax.
I suppose this doesn’t really need to concern me. The web as a platform will continue to exist and grow and mature. It’s just frustrating to observe this waste of time and energy.
UPDATE: I want to give credit where credit is due. My colleague Josh Gertzen was quoted in AjaxWorld magazine on the irrelevancy of JS2 in an article that ran on Slashdot for a while.
Sending Legitimate Bulk Email
This is for all those people who are trying to run a web business that need to send bulk email messages and don’t want them to go directly into their recipients’ spam folders.
Yesterday, I (and several others) dedicated several hours to the task of determining why every email we sent went directly into the spam folders of those we were trying to reach. When you search Google for information about spam filters, you find plenty of information about blocking unwanted email, but hardly anything about making sure your legitimate bulk email is not discarded with the trash. We were able to solve our issues, and so I thought I’d share our findings with the community.
- Send only plain text. Attachments and HTML content raise flags with content filters.
- Set the message header: “Precedence: bulk”
- You must set a subject, body, from address, and reply-to address (not having reply-to was my problem
In addition, if you are hosting your own mail server you should:
- Publish an SPF record in your DNS configuration
- Configure your MTA to and DNS to use DKIM. (Acronyms FTW!)
I hope this info is helpful to someone. I wish I had it.
Sources:
Blockbuster or Netflix
I’ve been a subscriber of Blockbuster Online for over two years now. At the start of this year, they raised their rate by $2 a month and limited the number of in store exchanges to 2 per month. What pushed me over the edge was the fact that they automatically published the movies I requested to my Facebook feed. I never authorized this, I never linked the accounts. In fact, I use different email addresses for those services, so they had to do some browser magic or something to accomplish this. To me, this is a violation.
So, the question is, do I switch to Netflix. Their plan for one at a time is $8.99, but there is obviously no in store rental. Instead they offer a selection of films that I can watch online. The problem is, that service is Windows only, and I’m on a Mac. (I’ve heard it does work in Parallels). Blockbuser offers a no store exchange plan at $8.99 as well.
Any thoughts? Any positive/negative experiences with either service?
ThinWire 1.2 Release Candidate 2 Available Now
ThinWire, the framework that provided my acclaim in the technology space, has just announced Release Candidate 2 of version 1.2 with promises of a final release within the week. This is very exciting news for anyone that uses the framework. It continues to get better and better over time. Congratulations Josh!
Blatant and Shameless Book Promotion
Yesterday at OSCon, Prentice Hall announced the launch of the Sourceforge Community Press. It is a special line of eBooks (called Shortcuts) that feature open source projects and are written by the developers themselves.
It is my pleasure to announce that one of the four titles available at launch is the ThinWire Handbook: A Guide to Creating Effective Ajax Applications, co-authored by yours truly. It is available now for the price of $12.99 as a downloadable PDF, and it is also available through the Safari Bookshelf.
In the book, Josh Gertzen and I provide an overview of the entire framework. Our goal is to describe the essence of each piece that makes up the complete framework, as well as to document features that may not be obvious to most developers. So, if you’re into that sort of thing, go pick up download a copy, and start learning the awesomeness that is ThinWire.
The Power of Fear
Are you afraid? You should be. There’s plenty to fear in this world, take your pick:
- Global Warming
- Terrorism
- Unstable Economy
- Job security
- Expiring natural resources
- Bad Credit
The list can go on and on. Fear is a very powerful emotion. It can cause people to act irrationally.
We lock our houses at night because we fear. We avoid people out of fear. We give up freedoms because we fear. We go to war because we fear. We buy insurance because we fear. Insurance, that’s an entire industry built on fear. “You need it because something bad could happen to you.”
So what is the anti-fear? Some would argue that it is knowledge. People fear what they don’t know. That’s why some people micro-manage. A micro-manager has to know every detail about every thing because they are afraid their project will fail otherwise. But more knowledge isn’t always a viable answer. No one can be an expert on everything. People must learn to trust each other.
Ah, so trust must be the anti-fear. But where does trust come from. Any person will tell you that trust has to be earned. Why must trust be earned? Because people are afraid to trust. A person must first prove that they are trustworthy, and then once they make a mistake, the status of trustworthy is revoked. So again, fear can kill trust, but trust alone isn’t powerful enough to fight fear.
So what is the anti-fear? I would suggest that it is love. Now, I’m not talking about the emotion of infatuation. I’m not talking about anything touchy-feely. The Greeks have several words that are translated as love in English. In Greek, I’m talking about Agape. Why is Agape the anti-fear?
I said earlier that fear is irrational, so is Agape. Agape is putting others before you no matter what. Unconditionally.
Agape is patient, agape is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Agape does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
It is completely senseless and irrational, but think about it. If you choose to agape, if you choose to love everyone, what happens to fear? You see, love is an action, it is a choice. It is a choice to not fear, but to trust. A choice not to fear, but to rejoice in truth. Reality has an amazing ability to fight fear. When the truth is known, what is there to fear? But because of love, you can trust and not fear, as the truth takes it’s time being revealed.
Now, when you walk around loving everyone and fearing no one, you open yourself up to being taken advantage of. It’s a big risk. In fact, it’s almost certain that you will be hurt in one way or another. There are real dangers in this world, things that could kill us. I would actually go so far as to say that a complete abandonment of fear would be stupid, because without fear, we’d all be killed by our own stupidity. If only there were a piece to this equation, someone or something that could be completely relied upon to give stability to everything.
This is where my faith in God comes into play. It is the Lord that provides this for me. I can trust in Him that, no matter what is going on in this life, I’m going to be ok. You may think that’s crazy, but I have no fear, and therefore no one on this earth has power over me.
