Category Archives: Coding, Software Engineering, Computer Science

Thank you CmdrTaco and Slashdot

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Rob Malda and Slashdot have done more to establish working, successful patterns for others to follow in online communities on the Web that few others (Metafilter, IndyMedia, and Salon.com come immediately to mind), can match, and are recognized for. Everyone keeps re-inventing elements of what they established, and missing lessons they learned the hard way.

A huge thank you to them all, and a good luck on your next endeavors Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda. Slashdot the community, and Slashdot the idea, has been a huge influence in my life and helped to show the world that online communities on the Web can work and help people connect.

Related:

Wired.com: Slashdot’s CmdrTaco Looks Back at 10 Years of ‘News for Nerds’

A few thoughts on Steve Jobs stepping down as Apple’s CEO

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Apple is far more than the creation of one man. A casual scan of Folklore.org, a site focused on its history, will tell you that.

But so would Steve Jobs.

He’s created a culture at Apple that is going to go on long with out him.

A few reads about Jobs stood out for me today and I’d thought I’d share them here:

WSJ: Steve Jobs’s Best Quotes – as someone said on Twitter, you could avoid reading a few business/programming/design tomes and just absorb these and be better off.

His Stanford University commencement speech: ‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says. He ties in his life history as an adopted child of working class parents, into his pursuit of his dream, the failures he encountered, and the lessons that he absorbed that made him stronger. There’s a bit about life, death, perspective and mission. It is worth reading in full. There are reasons it went viral. You can watch it on YouTube as well. But the text is best.

Anil Dash on “What they are ‘protecting’ us from” connecting Jobs liberal, working class background, with his success, and wondering why some are fighting the policies that enabled stories like Job’s to be possible.

You won’t find much Apple fandom here and I’m not going to wax poetic about Apple products, but in a way, for programmers of a certain age like myself, one of the leaders of the personal computing revolution is now walking off his most visible stage and we have much to be thankful for.

So thank you everyone at Apple, Pixar, and NeXT, and thank you Steve Jobs for providing inspiration, and the foundation for so many careers reflecting creativity, communication, and passion.

Java on… Heroku!!!!

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Heroku adds suport for Java: Heroku for Java.

Take note of how simple a basic Java web app can be. Sure it’s not Sinatra or Flask, but it is still mighty simple.

Folks who claim that ‘Java is dead’ or that it should die, aren’t facing up to where it shines and what it provides. It has a place alongside Python and increasingly JavaScript in my tool belt.

I’m a happy polygot programmer and have used Groovy, and custom DSLs in Java to help speed application development by enabling those who are closest to change, to be able to harness it.

The Web is 20

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I’d like to say thank you to Tim Berners-Lee and all those who were part of making the Web happen.

The original announcement (where? on Usenet of course!)

W3C

Design Issues for the World Wide Web

World Wide Web Foundation

Weaving the Web

See also: Dan Gillmor’s thank you

Text in Philly to know nearest farmer’s market

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PhillySNAP was launched during the recent Philadelphia Random Hacks for Kindness event and proivdes a service people can use to find affordable, fresh foods around them.

Alex Hillman: “Want a Hall Pass for Bureaucracy?”

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That’s the question Alex Hillman posed in his latest post, a great introduction to the efforts of Jeff Friedman, Manager of Civic Innovation and Participation for the City of Philadelphia and Code for America. Both, along with The Media Mobilizing Project are helping to surface, and connect people and resources leveraging in great part what Tim O’Reilly had called “the architecture of participation” way back in 2004.

I’ve always believed, due to personal experience, that when you enable people to connect and communicate with who and what they need to, with each other, great things are possible. These efforts provide gateways for those who work in technology to make contributions strengthening neighborhoods, communities, and the world.

BTW – check out the NYTimes piece on IndyHall, founded by Alex, which from everything I’ve ever heard from everyone who has worked there, sounds based on enabling the above.

Related

The Freedom Rings Partnership

OpenDataPhilly

Prometheus Radio

The Hacktory

NewAmerica.net: Preston Rhea: “How to Create a Public Computer Center”

O’Reilly Radar Gov 2.0

Quora: “How should the United States Congress use social media to enhance the legislative process?”

Wired: “Disrupting poverty: How Barefoot College is empowering women through peer-to-peer learning and technology”

Wired.com: “How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education”

flying kite: “Radio Revolution: West Philly’s Prometheus Promotes Stations by the People, For the People”

CMS and Presentation Systems

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stdout.be talks about what Presentation Systems are and what their responsibilities could be in an environment where the CMS is no longer a single system, but an ecosystem in “The Post-CMS CMS”. It’s a great post, and reminds me of how we’ve defined the role presentation systems play in our solution stack. (via @SeanBlanda)

Sean Blanda, in a related post says, “If all you want is a CMS, you’re doing it wrong”.

Matt Thompson, in a fantastic Poynter piece, “4 ways content management systems are evolving & why it matters to journalists”, specifically calls out how “Journalism is moving from ‘content management systems’ to “content management ecosystems”. Check out the comment thread.

Program or be Programmed at Webvisions 2011

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Programming, along with critical thinking skills, should be taught in K-12 along side reading, writing and arithmetic. Douglas Rushkoff has been making the case, not for jobs, or for just economic concerns, but for a healthy society.

Webvisions 2011: “Douglas Rushkoff: Program or be Programmed”:

If you have a child in Kindergarten, up to grade 12, who has never experienced programming, download MIT’s Scratch. It is free and it opens the gate.