Handful of Nothing

Jeff Mancuso, dev of expanDrive :

With high-level languages and good libraries, small teams can create great products at a rapid pace. We realized that we could write applications for the desktop in the exact same way. We rewrote SftpDrive from top to bottom in Python, with a GUI in Objective-C. It’s called ExpanDrive, and it took 1/3rd the time that SftpDrive took to develop.

read the nice post here

That’s what happened to us on Canola and other projects development, and no Canola2 was not a rewrite, it was a brand new application from scratch, using totally different technologies and we also achieved the same performance, including : more features more polished and also : more maintainable and the best one : easier to get a new dev on board (start time quite small for simple / medium tasks)

Of course this is not a silver bullet, a magical way and you should only consider giving it a chance if you haven’t : ) of course there will always be “no go”s and other reasons not to do it, but for a lot of user space applications it’s just an amazing tool to work on.

Hei guys :)

I would like to say that this is coming, and if everything goes right you will have it at least for linux :)

Video :

It’s fully functional, has some small problems in fullscreen (some screens are not yet ready for fully scalable uis ) but you can test everything in windowed mode.

Also, there’s two more tutorials coming, and gustavo published one simpler one for those that were not too keen to try the more complex youtube source code :

Gustavo’s simple model tutorial for canola2 plugin development

We think that if we can release this tar file (the generation is also automatic, so it will be updated with each new release) it would be quite nice for developers that want to try out.

For windows and mac users there’s a solution (not a good one but..) you can run a live cd of ubuntu (in vmware client for example) and do all development inside, the same way you would do it on the device.

Kudos for fleury and the rest of the team, and I will now try to do what it takes to release this asap :)

Marcelo

Click the image for more info.

INdT giving sequence to it’s software tech days is going to make another on november 20th and 21th in Joinville. This is a great opportunity to get in contact with Maemo development. Not only you will have introdutory course on developing for Maemo but also be able to attend small classes on Python for Maemo, Qemu and even the microBrowser extension courses.

the best part? it’s FREE! =) as in free beer!

Maemo may not be giving away 10 millions dollars, but it’s going near everyone to teach on person how to do stuff :) :

Talking to my buddy Marco gomes again, he complained about the iphoto tagging style (keywords) things that could take him too much time to use. So I did a simple googling, went to some of my favorite mac sites, and found this on the comments on all forces :
Keyword Assistant

Very nice freeware for improving your tag skills! Rocks.

*that’s what makes me really admire programmers who love to program. Sorry I’m not talking about those guys who learn the trendy language (eg: Java or .Net) just to get a job and earn some cash. Actually there’s nothing wrong with that besides the fact that those guys are creating dumb software and most of the time they are doing it in such a bureaucratic way that the software sucks like them.

This is loving to program. You find a problem, you solve. Your learn a new language, you improve your skills in the OS, whatever takes to solve the problem. That’s the hacker spirit. Solving problems with coding skills, really twisting the limits imposed.

By the way, if you are one of these guys that love to code, love python, linux, c, and would be dying to work on some cool things for embedded devices, drop me a line =)

Symbian has just announced it’s new APIs. Nothing new if they weren’t POSIX ones!. Now developers have more flexibility to play on the mobile os that is available in hundrends of million devices around the globe.

Hey linux developers, what about libc, libm, libpthread and libdl? Sounds like fun? I can believe you are a lot happier with that than with

Lot’s of video coming out our office =) You will be able to see a lot of Canola action, and also a thank you to all the guys who waited a lot for the release, sending a lot of comments here.

Video showing off the WoodBox Theme, Exchanging cards and saying thank you

Canola HOW TO : first video showing off the features in canola.

Take a look at this video to learn about the canola applet, using the configurator, shared media browsing, now playing shortcuts etc.

Under the Hood : 3 am in Brazil, after some months of hard working and overnight hours in the last weeks.

I’m not able to keep my eye opens! But it has been a lot of fun.

Take a second to at this very simple but nice accomplishment by brothercake’s owner. He used some oldschool css technics to create this nice “3d” maze demo.

from michael yuang (Sun) :

So, Ruby must be replacing Java to become the “next” programming language just as Java “replaced” C++/COBOL and C++ “replaced” Fortran… …Well, in my opinion, this kind of talk has some serious logical problems. First of all, as the short history of high technology has proven again and again, the “superior” solution does not always win over “inferior” ones. In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true. The question regarding to Ruby versus Java is NOT how much more advanced RoR is compared with Java EE — the real question is whether Java EE is good enough for most developers.

At least he admits that moderns languages are far superior to Java language =) So, if j2ee is good enoughfor you, and you don’t want to improve you time, your productivity, don’t try new things =) keep with java.