PatternDigest.com and Patterns in a Nutshell.

Great essay from Paul Graham. The old question… computer programming, is it art or science? Another piece I can point people to who are trying to understand your average computer geek. via rc3.org.

An abstraction is a boundary with two sides. On the top side, the abstraction presents a simplified view. Below, there is something more complex and more real. The purpose of the abstraction is to obscure what is really going on.

The world hidden underneath an abstraction is quite likely to be yet another abstraction. In fact, it is typical to have many abstractions stacked together, each one attempting to present an illusion which is even further from the truth. If you stack them up vertically, the ones at the bottom are more real than the ones at the top.

This is what programmers do. We build piles of abstractions. We design our own abstractions and then pile them up on top of layers we got from somebody else. Abstractions can be great. We use them because they save us a lot of time. But abstractions can also cause lots of problems.

So begins a great essay on the programmer practice of building abstractions and using them. Like Rafe I’m disappointed he ends such a great piece with evangelism (.NET over Java), but again, like Rafe, I feel you can ignore it. A good read.

I’ve finally switched to the better editor. I wonder what took me so long…

CIOMagazine: Your Open Source Plan

FastCompany: How Google Grows and Grows

Slashdot: US Jobs Jumping Ship

UC Davis DBIS: Oracle/SQL Tutorial

Wired News: Marking File Traders as Felons

I highly recommend reading World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else.

You’d think what this essay says is self evident. But it’s not and this doc is a great clarifying piece.

Two postive articles by Nicholas Petreley on client-side Java:

LinuxWorld: Vive Java et Blackdown!
LinuxWorld: Jedit, Jext & J: Java-based editors compared.

Over at ThisIsCool is a build of GCC that will compile to executables Java client-side apps with SWT.

Cringely explains how bad it is for Sun and what it needs to do to survive.

There is nothing conspiratorial about a company trying to make a buck while providing a service. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. Praise Google for having some vision. Just like Yahoo! before it. That was the point I was trying to make in my previous post that may have gotten lost. The Blogger team deserves this day and has helped to establish a new medium.

For a similar view, check out Google don’t blink at Scripting News and his overall thoughts on the deal.

Search Engine Watch: Google Buys Blogging Company – But Why?.

Threads: Blogroots and Metafilter.

Boing Boing: Gbloogle: what it all (may) mean.

On oldie but goodie: Jakob Nielsen: Why Yahoo is Good (But May Get Worse). Read it and compare to present day Google. 1998!

Another oldie: Louis B. Rosenfeld: The Untimely Death of Yahoo. 1995!

And another!: Traffick.com: Why Yahoo Is No Longer Good. Just last year.

And back to the issue at hand… NYTimes: Google Deal Ties Company to Weblogs. Whadda stupid title for this story! Google hasn’t “tied” itself to weblogs anymore then it tied itself to newsgroups upon purchasing DejaNews.

Congrats to Dan on the NYTimes mention and scooping just about everybody!

Yahoo!, how we loved you so?

You had a directory whose quality was unquestionable.

You had pages that were quicker then quick, light and fast.

You had the greatest geek mindshare, bar none.

When people asked – how do I find [this] on the web? We confidently answered, “Yahoo!”.

Then you decided to grow your business. AltaVista came and kicked your ass.

AltaVista, how we loved you so?

You had search results that were more accurate then your competitors.

You had pages that were quicker then quick, light and fast.

You took over the greatest geek mindshare, bar none.

When people asked – how do I find [this] on the web? We confidently answered, “AltaVista”.

Then you decided to grow your business. Google came and kicked your ass.

Google, by purchasing Pyra Labs (Blogger if you live in a cave) is now trodding down a predictable path. Will it make the same mistakes?

People forget how much power Yahoo! had over the web in it’s early days. As Google decides to grow it’s business – I’m going on the lookout for who is going to dethrone it. Look for it to happen in one to three years. Like to make a bet?

Isn’t this good for weblogging you ask? Initially, yes. Congrats to he Pyra folk who have been providing a valuable service to so many webloggers and readers. The service will definately be strengthened with Google’s resources behind it. I fear that eventually however, when companies control both the pipe (in this case the search engine) and what goes thru it (weblogs are found more by search engines then by other weblogs, contrary to belief) – it is only good for one entity – the company itself.

Usenet newsgroups are just growing by leaps and bounds aren’t they? Shelley is on target to remind us of Google buying Deja News.

Do people forget how great Geocities once was? eGroups? What makes Google so different from early Yahoo!?! Nothing! The same spirit that drove Yahoo! back in the day drives Google now. Yahoo! kicked ass. The geeks rallied behind it. Now it is a successful business. Good for Yahoo!. The pioneers however, moved on and promoted the upstart. Google has been kicking ass. The geeks have been rallying behind it. Soon it will be a large, successful business. And soon, a new generation of geeks will move on – eventually taking the web with them – to the new upstart.