Comfortable javascript editing in APEX

This week, I built a small extension to Patrick Wolf's APEX Builder Plugin. It generates separate text fields for javascript events. Makes writing event code quite a bit easier.

Maybe it's time to re-think what web development should be about

I just came about this link and am currently half-way through Dan Ingall's Google TechTalk. Wow!

Btw, there is also Smalltalk in Flash.

Object oriented database management systems

Recently, there were several blog posts about ODBMSs. It all started with this interview of Michael Stonebraker.
Dan Weinreb (ex ObjectStore) responded and today I read a blog post of Oracle's John Russell.

In the early/mid 90ies, when I was still on university and hooked on OO, ODBMSs had a big fascination for me. I read every book and paper about them I could get and had uni accounts on machines to play with Gemstone and ObjectStore. Hell, I even wrote one myself, in c++ and tcl (chaos - chris' alternative object store;-)).

Accidently, my first job was with Oracle 7 and Forms/Reports, "boring" technology or so I thought. This changed quickly, when I realized how efficient development in this environment was. It turned out that I didn't need all that fancy OO stuff I thought indispensable to get things done and have fun working. In some way, programming pl/sql even reminds me of the Gemstone/Smalltalk days. My interface seems minimalistic in comparison (sql*plus and vi), but it's only the interface to that powerful, persistent multiuser sql and pl/sql machine.

Javascript

This is a fun language. It contains pretty good stuff and annoying incompatibilities. However, it's one of the most important languages for software developers and just now, I'm very lately trying to get a better grip, because of this current project. I've hacked an odd XMLHttpRequest before it was called AJAX, but now we've got additional problems. Our SW has to run on hand-helds, so we've got special keyboard and performance requirements, e.g. we can't use the framework of my former colleague Patrick Wolf. According to Doug Crockford, there are no acceptable books. The available Javascript source code for Oracle APEX, the platform we'll of course use as die-hard Oracleheads, is ugly, especially compared to what Crockford and others preach.

Rob Pike on video, Plan 9 flashback

Today I watched a very recent video of Rob Pike talking about his 20 year old language Newsqueak.

I used his text editor "sam" on linux in the mid-90ies for a while, when Plan 9 first came on my radar. What first impressed me was the paper accompanying the source code. The code itself is very elegant and minimalistic. Though it didn't take off (probably just because of those attributes, baroque featuritis wins in the end), there are some great ideas in Plan 9 that can provide inspiration. The plumbing paper for example gave me the idea for a generic navigation concept in an Oracle Forms application, in 2000. We called it "hyperlinks", though...

After thinking about all that again, this post wouldn't be complete without mentioning Boyd Roberts. The link's dead, of course.

Well the first post is the hardest post. My stupid blog title was selected while listening to this song by the Grateful Dead. Fnord.