August 31, 2005
August 30, 2005
August 29, 2005
August 25, 2005
Racoon progress
I've been snatching a few hours here and there to progress racoon, but progress is slow. I need the 48 hour working day people keep promising.
I've already got the simple "create a prototype application" step working, though it's evolving almost daily as I add capabilities to the application itself. It's definitely in the territory of "quick hack" at the moment, but I think it shows the way for how it would work in practice.
I've been experimenting with writing a Generator to give me database schemas as XML, with some success. JDBC provides some methods for getting metadata about tables, and it almost works for me. Progress on this is slow, though, so I decided to take a short cut: Ruby on Rails performs a series of queries against the database to get this information, so I cheated and copied those queries for now. I'm using them in combination with the SQL Transformer to let me try out some of the other components without being held up on the Generator step.
So last night I got the first pass of dynamic forms generated from a database schema working. It's rough and has lots of limitations, but at least I have something tangible now. Add a row to the database table, and a new field is added to your Cocoon Form automatically.
This morning I had a couple of evil ideas for how to improve on Rails' database configuration, which I'm trying out now. I think with Rails' ideas and Cocoon's power, we might just have a killer framework ...
August 23, 2005
Inheritance
Sometimes it's not good to inherit things from one's parents. From my father, sciatica. Thank god for inheriting my mother's sense of humour. Though all that giggling as I crawled toward the medicine cabinet at 4am would probably be cause to have me committed, if anyone saw me.
I'm sure my body could have come up with a politer way to tell me that I shouldn't try to both swim and dance the weekend away in a nightclub. At least not without a ready supply of painkillers bought in advance. I guess it's time I picked just one way of abusing my body, and it should probably be swimming. The thought of that hurts more than the sciatica.
Owwwwww. Maybe not.
August 21, 2005
Links
- Ideas are just a multiplier of execution
- coconutBattery is a tool that reads out the data of your Apple laptop battery
- Trails is a domain driven development framework in the spirit of Ruby on Rails
- Model Driven Architecture for the enterprise
- Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design
- Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds
- Mac OS X Hints: watch file system activity in real time
- Imagination: it's sort of blobby shaped and in your head
- Call your specification RSS Dick Waving
- Plazes is a grassroot approach to location-aware interaction (where is Andrew?)
- Competition between Open-Source and Proprietary Organizations (PDF)
August 19, 2005
Get it right
Maven 1 has been causing me some pain on a project, so after much urging from Paul, I thought I'd take a quick look at Maven 2 and see if it would help.
Working through the Getting Started documentation, I'm less than impressed:
m2 archetype:create -DgroupId=uk.co.luminas.myapp -DartifactId=my-app
ls -R my-app
[.. snip ..]
my-app/src/main/java/com/mycompany/app:
App.java
Riiiight. Call me naive, but I'd expect to see my-app/src/main/java/uk/co/luminas/app. I know this is a 'technology preview' and I should expect some problems, but seriously - how could something as basic as this be wrong?
I could launch into a bile-filled rant about the state of maven, I could do the cluefull thing and dive into the maven community and file a bug report or help them fix the documentation to manage expectations properly. Actually though, I can't muster the enthusiasm to do either, and I just despair of the whole XML-obfuscated dependency-laden mind-numbingly complex absurdity that is modern-day project building tools. Maybe this was a mistake :-(
August 15, 2005
What does Lepido give you?
Jeremy and I have been exploring the different things you might use Eclipse for. We've been stalwarts of the "less is more" approach to development environments: BBEdit, Textmate, JEdit and a shell being some of the preferred options. One thing I haven't seen much noise about yet is what Lepido gives you when working with Cocoon.
The first thing you get is a more graphical view of sitemaps (click the images for larger versions). A view of the components in your sitemap:
A list of the resources in your sitemap:
And the pipelines:
You also get Views, Action Sets, Flow, and Source views.
You also get a Forms definition editor - though I'm having some trouble getting that to work right now.
The installation prerequisites suggest you download EMF, GEF, JEM and WTP but you can actually install them via Software Updates within Eclipse.
I'll write a little more when I've had a chance to really play with this stuff.
August 12, 2005
August 11, 2005
Welcome to Racoon
Back in February I decided to take Ruby on Rails for a spin. I was curious to see what people were talking about, and why David was so keen to try it out.
I found there was much to like about Rails, particularly the maxims of "Write Less Code", "Don't Repeat Yourself", and "Convention Over Configuration". Even though I believe Cocoon is a Swiss Army Chainsaw capable of tackling a wide range of projects, I could certainly see why Rails is considered advantageous in some situations.
Of course, being big on words and short on comprehension, I couldn't see why Cocoon doesn't emulate some of the ease-of-use that Rails embodies. I think as developers we've become a little too willing to spend hours in arcane XML configuration files, tweaking our myriad-dependency toolkits and ignoring what Larry Wall considered the most important virtues of a good programmer: laziness, impatience and hubris.
This evening I finally started work on an idea I'd been discussing with David and Jeremy for several months: Racoon. All the fun of Rails, on Cocoon. I'm too lazy to keep writing tons of xconf patches, I'm too impatient to fiddle around with object-relational mapping tools, and as for hubris: well, there's no way I'm the best coder around, but I like to think I'm more lazy and impatient than anyone else I know ;-)
Some notes: no, I have no idea yet if I can make this work to any sane and reasonable degree. Think of it as a grand experiment or as the product of evenings spent with some good red wine. Secondly, there's some obvious overlap with the Lepido project, but I think I'm aiming for a different level of user: the kind of person that's happier in TextMate than Eclipse. Finally, I'm playing around with this outside of either of the obvious communities at first, because I want to get a greater understanding of the problems and solutions. This is me experimenting.
August 10, 2005
Maven and Eclipse
Using Eclipse and Maven is a useful pointer to working with the two. However, in Eclipse 3.1, the place to configure the build variables has changed slightly: you now need to go to Window -> Preferences -> Java -> Build Path -> Classpath in order to add the MAVEN_REPO variable (which should point to something like ~/.maven/repository).
If you have a multiproject setup (using Maven 1.0.2), to get running you also need to do:
maven multiproject:goal -Dgoal=eclipse
maven multiproject
August 4, 2005
Food
Wooo!
wagamama norwich
this city on the far east coast of the uk will have it's very own wagamama in winter when we open in the chapelfields area
August 3, 2005
Rails vs J2EE
From IBM developerworks:
So, should you consider Rails for your next Web application? Well, why shouldn't you? It's a well-written stack of components that work well with each other and are based upon industry accepted enterprise patterns.
[...]
Should you dispense with J2EE altogether in favor of Rails? Absolutely not. J2EE is a well-established standard with several solid implementations and, most importantly, is a proven technology.
- Ruby on Rails and J2EE: Is there room for both?
I spent some time over the weekend advancing my knowledge of Rails and Ruby, and started the working week with "sort out a Maven multiproject build problem" as my first task. After crawling through screenfuls of XML configuration, I'm really starting to appreciate the Rails "convention over configuration" approach.
Donkeys
We visited The Donkey Sanctuary in Devonshire;
Please note:
you must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is Devon. If you persist in calling it Devonshire, all American States will become shires (e.g. Texasshire, Floridashire, Louisianashire).
- Brits revoke American Independence
I hope Tim is using Devonshire ironically ...