Jesse Ezell Blog
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Fun Stuff
Now you can have your own talking Iraqi Disinformation Minister Doll (or babbling Osama doll).
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SETI@Home
A few bloggers have pointed out this article. It is very good.
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Don wants his XPathNavigator instead
How did I know Don would say this :-).
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Xml Interfaces Reloaded
"Jesse Ezell has a post where he criticizes my recent entry on Tight Coupling vs. Loose Coupling. He seems to have drawn the same conclusions I did about Interfaces vs. Abstract classes when it comes to versioning APIs then asks why using an API based on abstract classes that represent an RSS item isn't better than passing around IXPathNavigable objects. He correctly points out that an API based on objects is easier to code against than one based on passing around XML. However, the goal of passing around XML instead of objects is flexibility and not necessarily an easier programming model." While I agree that flexibility is important and that the easiest way to give this flexibility is to just pass the raw data around. However, if you ask me that is not a solution but a cop out. Instead of solving any problems yourself, you force every developer who interfaces with your code to do so. Proving an extensible object model allows you to solve many issues while allowing developers to add extensions as they are needed.
[Dare's Diary]
Case and point, anyone who works with the SoapReflectors, SoapExtensions, etc. that are part of the framework will quickly realize why a rich object model is a vastly superior solution. The fact remains that WS-* space is a heck of a lot more complex and evolving a heck of a lot faster than the RSS space, yet the object model provided by MS remains easy to use and extensions to the base functionality are not as beholden to the application (the .NET Framework in this case) as Dare would have you believe. How many posts have you seen from developers saying, "man this ws-extensions toolkit is really cool, but I wish Microsoft just gave us a XPath navigator instance instead"? -
OlyMars
Lots of negative talk regarding OlyMars lately. I will admit that I don't have the time to figure out how to use it (gave it a try a few times, but just wasn't my style). However, it is still a very cool tool, it just has a crappy interface on top of it, but it isn't meant to be production code anyway now is it? My understanding is that it is just a research project...and when is the last time you saw a research project with warm fuzzy documentation and a sexy UI?
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Dare on XML vs. Interfaces
"However there is a significant difference which is a consequence of the fact that data typically evolves faster than code. In the past few months significant changes to the RSS landscape have occured with the rise of RSS 2.0, replacement of content:encoded with xhtml:body by some notable RSS feeds and the invention of the CommentAPI. There would be significant API churn and information overload if a new interface was cooked up anytime something new happened in the RSS world and a news aggregator wanted to support this feature."
[Dare's Diary] -
IUniversalDoTheWork
"Seeing the struggle between Simon Fell, Don Box and Sam Gentile about XML vs interface is a bit funny. Whaoo, going this way, we will have soon the universal interface for all implementations : public interface IUniversalDoTheWork { IXPathNavigator DoTheWork(IXPathNavigator nav); } Going to past now, if IPathNavigable is so much better, why was it so bad to use VARIANT in COM interfaces ? XML is nice. Really. But let XML exist for what it is good for: data exchange."
[Pierre Chalamet] -
Flash Remoting
Following the link John Dowell left in his great comments about PPT -> SWF conversion, I eventually stumbled upon this article about using remoting in Flash MX (for those who are not aware, you can actually use remoted J2EE and .NET components from the Flash player starting with MX). Turns out that the Macromedia community's interest in design patterns is increasing as well. The difference is that it is a really new thing in the Flash community, and you generally are dealing with simpler patterns, not enterprise level patterns (still pretty cool nonetheless).
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Object Mappers
"NONE of them are easy to use. All I want to do is specify a database and hit "Generate". Kickstarter.net is on the right track, but they've got a ways to go."
[Robert McLaws] -
PPT->Flash
According to the reviewer's guide the Powerpoint equivalent from Corel's Office 11 can export to SWF (Macromedia Flash file format). Why Microsoft has not yet done this is a mystery to me, there is a huge demand for this today: