Up to Scratch

Took a break from my seaside investigations to download Scratch. Have to say I am very impressed!

Tonight I am hoping to introduce my 9 year old son to it and see how it flies with its intended audience.  It’s interface is very clean and very intuitive and takes EToys to the next level.  Within about an hour of investigating last night I was able to write a game where my cat had to dodge giant raindrops to avoid being washed away.  This stuff is very simple and very cool.

It’s also great to see another smalltalk product out there that looks good and plays good and may just catch the imagination of the next generation of software developers.

Alan Kay talked of Inventing the Future – the future is our kids and they may be inventing with Scratch and Smalltalk.

A Matter of Factory

In my continued exploration of Seaside I revisited an implementation of Factory pattern that is especially easy in Smalltalk and oh so difficult in Java. I enjoyed the rediscovery so much I thought I share it here.

Champion in the Game of Life

Listened to one of the most incredibly moving stories I’ve ever heard in church yesterday. 

 I won’t spoil the story here but this guy called David Ring was talking about how he overcame a real bum deal in life to become a “champion”.   This is not one of those “in” stories that you have to be a Christian to appreciate, this is a story that will inspire and challenge believer and non-believer alike.

If you ever get chance to hear him speak then please do – it will make your own problems seem smaller and your future more hopeful.

I Want to be on th Beach

Just over ten years ago when I worked as a Smalltalk consultant I mentored a developer transitioning to Smalltalk from VB. He was clearly excited about what Smalltalk could do, so much so that he would go home and bore his not-so-technical girlfriend with his new found passion. In trying to put into layman’s terms what he was experiencing he described it like this…

“programming in VB is like writing documentation, programming in Smalltalk is like writing poetry“

I have been working with Java now for so many years that I’d almost forgotten that software development could be truly enjoyable. Then a few days ago I found Seaside. I have worked a number of Java frameworks over the past few years: Struts, JSF, Tapestry and Wicket (in my opinion the pick of the Java frameworks) but nothing can come within a 1000 miles of what I’ve been able to do in just a few hours of playing with Seaside. There aren’t enough superlatives to describe how good Seaside is. Avi Bryant I salute you!

If you’re reading this from some dreary office in the middle of winter and wishing you we’re on a beach somewhere then my advice is get to the Seaside a play a while. You might just remember how good it felt to be a child with a bucket and spade and a vast expanse beach to explore.

New Blog

Time to move on.  I’m leaving behind my old Blogger blog and joining the WordPress revolution.

I’m not the most frequent of bloggers but if you stop by I hope you’ll find something interesting