allertonm

Capturing this kind of knowledge - especially from ad-hoc decision making - for future reference is an explicit goal of SAP's Streamwork product. It is of course open to question whether that goal is achieved, but certainly SAP (as an organization very focused on the way businesses are run) are very aware of this problem and actively trying to provide a solution.

(Disclaimer: I was the lead architect for the initial release of Streamwork, but have since left SAP.)

Well, to be fair to Google, this looks very similar to the CssResource mechanism that has been in GWT for a while now, with the addition of mixins. If this is an evolution of the GWT version it's likely to be fairly mature "out of the gate".

In this instance - since this is a node app - they are running the engine server side.

But yes, they do have a plugin version of Fabric. I have similar misgivings about that.

Not that it diminishes the interestingness of this post (quite the opposite), but it's worth noting that this is not achieved using plain-vanilla JavaScript. From the product page:

"The high-performance parts of the application are written using a performance-specific extension to JavaScript, called KL (Kernel Language). This language is similar in scope and syntax to JavaScript, but has some key differences that optimize it for writing high-performance code.

Fabric applications are described as a dependency graph (think of a flow chart). The dependency graph describes data, and the transformations that must happen to that data. Fabric analyses the graph to discover where it is possible to perform tasks in parallel. (task-based decomposition) Fabric analyses the graph to discover where it is possible to perform the same instruction on lots of data at the same time.

All of this is possible because Fabric has the LLVM compiler embedded within it. This means that applications are dynamically compiled on target. The Fabric plug-in has to be written for each platform, but Fabric applications only have to be written once.

Fabric handles CPU multi-threading automatically, but the developer must explicitly write code for the GPU using OpenCL."

This looks like an evolution of the CssResource mechanisms used in GWT for a while now, adding some features from LESS like mixins.

Wondered what was going on here, as yesterday it became clear that a few well known names had left the company...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3207470

Indeed you can - but I suspect I know why Node has avoided this.

If you did take advantage of the runtime's support for multiple global objects, what would those global objects correspond to? The most natural scope would be "user session" - but if you go that route, now you support stateful user sessions. And before you know it you have developers storing loads of user session state in the server's RAM and wondering why they keep running out - and lose the ability to easily fail over to another server process.

So I imagine Node's author decided it was better to just keep things simple and discourage use of globals.

ISTM the author's "pure javascript" version of the horse/snake example is not solving the same problem as the CoffeeScript one.

In the CS code, the association between the object and it's type of motion (galloping/slithering) is made at construction time (via the implementation of "move" associated with the object), and in the "pure javascript" code it is made at the call site for "move".

This seems like such a fundamental difference that it becomes a little difficult to take the rest of the argument seriously.

While it's true to say "ECMA decided not to adopt", it omits the important information that most of the opposition came from Yahoo (AIUI Douglas Crockford was instrumental in this) and Microsoft, who might have their own motivations other than "preserving the feeling of coding javascript." And Google too, which is kind of a WTF given Dart.

Well, the main evidence for me can be found in the leaked "Dart/Dash" memo, where GWT is referenced a few times:

"The JSPrime effort was begun to unify and be a (single!) successor to GWT and Closure/JSCompiler"

"What is the future of the JSCompiler and GWT? JSCompiler and GWT were already on a merger path. This effort gives us a direction for that unification around the Dash language. We will actively support teams for a long time on the current generation of JSCompiler and GWT and provide fantastic co-existence and migration tools to Dash."

See: http://markmail.org/message/uro3jtoitlmq6x7t

(My emphasis added. I read that as "maintenance mode".)

(Edit: thanks for the heads-up on the FF6 version of the plugin - but I guess I have now missed the two-week window where both FF6 and the compatible version of the plugin where available to download!)

Great. So now I have to be two versions behind if I need to use GWT hosted mode.

(Grrr... yet more evidence of G's gradual sunsetting of GWT.)

This one drove me nuts. Many developers were achieving the same result in firefox 3.6 and earlier using an XUL hack - but in FF4, the ability to do that XUL hack was removed for (valid) security reasons - but without addressing the text-overflow: ellipsis issue for which they'd had an open bug tracker entry for about 5 years. There were many complaints about this months before FF4 was released but they went ahead anyway.

Hidden away in there is the news that Google plans to obsolete GWT.

Sorry, I mean "support teams for a long time on the current generation".

I don't have downvoting capability, otherwise I'd downvote you for condescension.

Gruber's a great writer for the most part, but this particular instance of his work is pretty trite and hardly a unique observation. His lack of knowledge about the players in the space should give a clue to readers about how much weight to give the rest of his insights about this subject.

Perhaps so, but in this case you don't have to look too closely.

Autonomy & SAP have similar customers, true. But the suggestion in Gruber's post is that the purchase of Autonomy is a substitute for a purchase of SAP. Which is a bit like saying the purchase of a front drivers side door mirror is a substitute for the purchase of a car.

(Downvotes too, jeez.)

I tend to agree with anigbrowl. While there are some overlapping products, those things are a tiny fraction of what SAP sells and far from their core business (I used to work for SAP Business Objects.)

You may also be shocked to discover that the HTML spec includes its own language with Scheme-like semantics and Java-like syntax.

I'm not very comfortable with the idea of them using Jef Raskin's name in that way. Perhaps it's a well-meaning tribute from their point-of-view but from mine it seems like a sleazy attempt to capitalize on someone else's reputation.

I would love to be able to use Protovis but as an SVG-only toolkit it is not very practical if you have to provide a good experience to MSIE 7 & 8 users - see http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/protovis...

(Yeah, I know, if they wanted a good experience why would they use IE7? But I think we have to live with IE8 for a good while.)

"They also asked him to try to keep Intellectual Venture's involvement in derailing patent reform quiet, since top investors in IV, such as Bill Gates, supported patent reform."

Stay classy, IV.

So what you are saying is that you don't believe it is true to call it a post-PC device now, but it will be true at some point in the future.

And your problem with this is? Just that they are saying it now? Don't understand the concern, honestly.

Even if the author was right about the iPad not being a post-PC device, your assertion that it is just a peripheral is laughable hyperbole.

The author seems to assume that Apple is either unaware of the contradiction or aware of it with no plan to change. In other words, that the management of Apple is either stupid or blind. Recent history does not suggest that either is the case.

It seems more likely to me that Apple is very much aware of the contradiction but has plans to change this, but no intention of telling us about it yet.

Gotta wonder what that huge data centre they are building is for, eh?

"Only recently did iTunes remove DRM from their songs"

A timeline:

iTunes store opens: April 26 2003

Steve Jobs DRM letter: Feb 6 2007 (4 years ago)

EMI content available DRM free: May 29 2007

80% of iTunes music DRM free: Jan 6th 2009

All US iTunes music DRM free: April 7th 2009

So I think you are stretching the meaning of "only recently", especially when considered in terms of the pace of technology development (as opposed to, say, geological time.)

You couldn't even buy an iPhone when they started removing it. The period over which they were exclusively selling DRM content is actually shorter than the period since they stopped.

(Update: that last part is not quite right - I was counting from the DRM letter date, not the EMI date. But it's close.)

My theory is that the set of GS fans and the set of Ayn Rand fans is very similar. The appeal of GS to the randroid mindset seems obvious.

(Update: amused by the accusations of blasphemy.)

Thanks, that does improve jlouis case quite a bit.

(And makes me sound a bit uncharitable too. Merry Xmas!)

I've no horse in this race, but the comment..

"I have written production level code in Erlang, namely a BitTorrent client good enough for everyday use"

...seems to be going some way towards proving the Acharya's point #4 for the following reasons:

1) No reference to any actual users of the code apart from the author himself.

2) No link to where the code is available.

3) Code is a single-user client, when Erlang's strength is usually considered to be in multi-user servers.

It's not obvious that the author understands what is meant by "production level", since the project mentioned does not even appear to meet the most liberal possible interpretation of this term, which would be "shipped".

Nicely done!

Not sure your comment about Microsoft is entirely correct - I know that was the stated intention when MS started the site but I see some evidence that they are hiring locally.

90Degrees was founded by a former colleague of mine, and they definitely hired a lot more than just sales from BOBJ, actually I'd have said it was the opposite - they took a lot of tech guys from my old team at a time when morale got pretty low a year or so after BOBJ took over. Most of those guys relocated to Redmond after MS took over, a few are back at SAP.

Being acquired by a larger company will affect the culture. Most people who date from the days of Crystal look back fondly on that time. Things definitely took a hit after BOBJ took over but if you look back the site thrived under BOBJ. It may have helped that BOBJ was really only 50% bigger than Crystal at the time. SAP is a different story, they were about 10x the size of BOBJ. I left, which tells you something about my morale there.

There has been a bit of turnover at Indicee - there was a period (prior to my arrival) when they were using more contractors etc - but we have a pretty solid full-time team now. We just pushed out a 2.0 of the product which is a substantial reworking.

SAP have a big site downtown (formerly Crystal/Business Objects.) Microsoft have a site downtown (in Crystal's old space, ironically enough.) Apple has a secret site (via their 2005 acquisition of Schemasoft.) Vision Critical has approx 160 people in the old Pivotal building.

Crystal/BOBJ/SAP has acted as an academy company for enterprise BI software in the same way that EA has for gaming. There are a few BI companies started by ex-Crystal people and rumour has it that some companies have opened sites here to soak up some of the post-SAP diaspora (Qliktech for example.)

Don't expect those kind of businesses to get much love here on HN, but there is still plenty of tech employment in this town and I'd say the prospects were getting better not worse.

(FWIW I am a former Crystal/BOBJ/SAP employee and now work at Indicee, a SaaS BI startup.)