Dev Dawn

Bob Z has posted again, regarding the Clarion Roadmap.

It’s great (awesome even, although I use that word far too frequently) to see this communcation. Getting another look inside, seeing how the development is going, what purpose and direction they (SoftVelocity) have.

Keep it up Bob!

Here are two snippets of interest (”Spirit” being Clarion 7, and “Hidalgo” being Clarion .NET) ::

Spirit is currently scheduled to be completed and released this year (2006). It will support development of Win32 applications using any version of Clarion from 1.5 to 7.0. We’re considering releasing tech preview builds to Core Subscription users as we get closer to RTM, and before that organizing an Alpha release team, primarily to allow 3 rd party vendors to prepare new editions of their products.

The current plan is to release Hidalgo in calendar year 2006. Prior to the RTM for Hidalgo we’re considering releasing Clarion.Net subscriptions and tech preview builds, but that will depend largely upon how quickly we can get the heap of new language syntax documented, and the new Template sets tested.

Bob Z has posted on the Softvelocity Blog re the Clarion UKCUG meeting.

It’s a clarification post, addressing misinformation that occured on Dev Dawn (and consquently ClarionMag.

This will be a good thing for the community I believe.

Bob is blogging, talking to the community. One of the most common complaints I read on the newsgroups is SV’s lack of communication.

Dev Dawn was reporting straight away, and despite me not being there, going through Mark, it turned out okay.

I responded to each and every clarification that was shown to me. I’m not at all worried about changing what I’ve already written if it’s wrong, it would be silly to be so arrogant as to take that stance. But I’d do it again in an instant (with some more wisdom intact of course, perhaps a micro-second slower :)), because we’re the community. We pass info around.

Noone can be responsible for how someone else reacts to the information but that individual themselves, the only thing to do is to make sure the information is accurate.

So thanks to Bob for blogging. Clarifying. Communicating.

I’ve recently discovered Dr. Explain, an amazing little piece of help-authoring software. Clarion Mag put me onto it, so cheers to David!

Expect a review within a few days. I’m using it to rewrite the small amount of stuff I did for the last Projman (beta) release.

Cheers,

Have been sick the last couple of days. Haven’t been able to dedicate the vast resources of my frontal-upper-lobal-braincells to blogging, as they’ve been preoccupied with the control of bodily functions that make babies of us all.

Heh heh. Waaaay too much info I know.

My morning’s reading comprised of this Ajax toolkits review. It’s nice to have them put side by side, looking at the benefits of each one. Will definately equip you with a bit more knowledge of what’s going on in that world.

Dojo, GWT, and Atlas excited me the most, on cursory glance.

Atlas because it’s gonna heavily integrate with a .NET Server (exactly whatever that means) and we know how much the commercial sector (read: Big Business Dudes) love to know you know .NET.

GWT because you actually write in Java (despite the problems this might bring). I like the idea that it translates on the fly.

And Dojo because it’s got backing from Sun and IBM, and because it sounds very robust, with a large amount of functionality.

So yeah. Not much of a thought today .. but enough for a blog :).

Cheers,

Was reading this very interesting article (SlashDot) on the demise of TechTV, and came across this Wikipedia reference to Big Rigs.

Now, you read through that page and try not to laugh out loud. It’s awesome. So much the stuff of folklore.

I consider myself a gamer, but shamefully, today is the first i’ve heard of this game, which has achieved cult status. That’s pretty cool. It’s got it’s own religion. The Rigism message board is where most of this action can be found.

Now. The Development slant to this .. hmmm ..

If something so bad gains a cult following, perhaps .. If we know our product is not going to achieve the heights of massive success (whether from good design, massive marketing, great coding, or any mix), then perhaps we should not go for mediocrity, but plunge to the depths of LOSER-ness.

Create something so bad that it’s good. Come up with “YOU’RE WINNER” functionality.

Now, I’m not talking about newb-first-time-coding-clarion bad, or even i-can’t-design-a-database bad. It’s gotta suck so much, that it opposes any and all of the points it set out to win at.

For example, an Accounting System that cannot make any mathematical calculations, but just randomises a value. The windows to enter ciritical data have no entries on them. Reports have to be run before entering data. Nothing is saved.

Actually, this is harder than I first thought. Needs some better understanding of what constitutes as so bad it’s good.

Cheers,

Projman has a new version!

The two big things to come out of it are:

• The User can now tell the Web Server what Port Number to listen on
• HelpDesk has been created to cater for Projman’s (and my other Systems) Help and Documentation needs!

What’s doing??? Go and find the bugs already :).

The Documentation isn’t complete yet, but I plan to add more each build.

The next big addition will be reports.

Cheers till next we meet,