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Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Video: ACM 2007 – Behind the Scenes

December 24th, 2007 No comments

Interesting video… See what happened behind the scene just before ACM ICPC 2007.

Categories: General, Programming Tags:

Creating a Distribution Package of Your Java Application

December 24th, 2007 No comments

So you picked up a project and write the code in Java then comes the time to distribute your program. You are going to need to create an installer package rather than distributing it directly as a JAR file.

It is better to give them a normal plain installer package that they know how to run through the wizard.

Geek Stuff Javazing blog has an article on how to do that. Ultimately before you’ll be able to follow the tutorial you going to have to download the following tools:
1. Ant tool.
2. NSIS: a scriptable win32 installer/uninstaller system.
3. ProGuard: java shrinker, optimizer, and obfuscator.
4. Launch4j: Cross-platform Java executable wrapper for creating lightweight Windows native EXEs.
5. NSIS Ant task: to compile NSIS scripts.

Categories: JAVA Tags:

HTML 5 In Preview

December 21st, 2007 No comments

Bored from the div attribute of HTML? Well, I am bored myself and I have been writing HTML 4 since I was in Middle School. We have been using HTML 4 for almost a decade and it really needs an upgrade. In fact, W3C and WHATWG have been working on setting the specification of HTML 5. Major browsers companies and groups are taking part in setting some specifications of HTML 5, but I don’t think it will be done soon.

A List Apart has a really great article on HTML 5 preview which I really encourage all web developers to read it.

Categories: General Web Development Tags:

PHP is not a bad programming langauge

December 20th, 2007 10 comments

Roshan posted in his blog some reasons of why PHP is a bad programming langauges in his oppinion. Unfortunately, I disagree in some of the points Roshan pointed out.

1) No need to define and declare variable
2) No Strict data conversion

I can’t see how these two points can make PHP a bad programming language. PHP just let the interpreter binds the variable to a type.

In my opinion, dynamic type binding provides a great deal of flexibility in programming. You don’t have to know the type of the data input to be able to process it. However, that flexibility advantage is not free. It will cost us the speed of detecting the type of the assigned value each time a new value is assign to the variable.

4) No namespaces

Namespace will be introduced in PHP 5.3.

6) Seldom use of Framework

It depends on the developers and the size of the project. There are many Frameworks available and for free. But when some, or many, developers decided not to use Framework in their projects I can’t see how it makes PHP a bad programming language. Like any other programming languages, you can always not use framework for any kind of project.

what i think, PHP is a incomplete programming language as well as a bad programming language which gives bad practise for the programmers.

It can’t be true. PHP is one of the famous programming languages (after Java) and one of the most used. Many companies and organizations prefer LAMP developers than any kinds of web developers. PHP is still growing and you can find almost any sample of codes available all over the web.

Sponsor Text
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Categories: PHP Tags:

Adobe Announced BlazeDS

December 18th, 2007 No comments

Adobe has announced the BlazeDS beta release on Adobe labs. Now you can connect data between your Flash application and any other applications whether it is made by PHP, Ruby…etc.

Now, developers can easily connect to back-end distributed data, as well as push data in real-time to Adobe® Flex™ and Adobe AIR™ applications, for more responsive rich Internet application (RIA) experiences.

Ajax Tools Survey

December 17th, 2007 No comments

Ajaxian‘s Ajax survey shows that Prototype is the most used framework for Javascript and Ajax. That’s really shocking, or at least for me, I never though Prototype is that famous. But still, Dojo is my favorite 🙂

Categories: Ajax Tags:

New Chart API From Google

December 15th, 2007 No comments

Google announced the release of a new charting API that can be easily embedded within a webpage using the <IMG> HTML tag. You send the parameter for charting specification using HTTP request, and then Google will return the chart as a PNG images. Currently, Google provides these following charts:
• Line chart
• Scatter plot
• Bar chart
• Venn diagram
• Pie chart

To illisturate how easy it is to embed a chart to a webpage, here is an example taken from Google Chart faq:

<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
chs=200x125
&amp;chd=s:helloWorld
&amp;cht=lc
&amp;chxt=x,y
&amp;chxl=0:|Mar|Apr|May|June|July|1:||50+Kb"
alt="Sample chart" />

The boundary of web applications is over and we are now pushing forward to the next killer applications era. More and more mash-ups applications are lighten up with new unpredictable features provided for free. Google is taking the upper hand to cast aside old convention of web design and use ready-on-the-shelf professional web applications.

Categories: General Web Development Tags:

AppJet, An Online IDE For Web Developers

December 13th, 2007 No comments

AppJet, a new online IDE for developing client or server sided web applications. The IDE supports syntax highlighting, editing, reviewing, and publishing the code within the web browser.

More and more web-based applications are appearing in the market nowadays. One of the greatest is Buzzword, an online word processing program acquired lately by Adobe. Also, Bungee Labs, a beautiful on-demand web based application to develope web applications for free for non-commercial projects.

So there is a web gravity to mobilize computer applications and webitize it. Hmmmm, formula for web gravity = (Web Constant) X (2007) / (Windows + Mac) – (Flash + Ajax)^2 !!!

Warning: Spoiler!
Problem 1: A nerdy web developer is attempting to create an application. He is considering two platform options to work on. One of these options is making the application a web based application. He decided the Windows factor will be 1.3 and Mac to be 1.1, however, the Flash factor is 2.875 and Ajax factor is 3.2. Answer the followings:
a) What is the web gravity value?
b) Should he invest his application on the web?

Categories: General Web Development Tags:

Papervision 3D 2.0 Alpha is Out

December 6th, 2007 No comments

Papervision 3D version 2.0 is now out in Alpha (pre-beta) version. According to Ralph Hauwert the alpha version is not yet optimized so expect a lot of updates to come.

The announcement came 6 day after celebrating the first anniversary for Papervision as an open source project. Papervision has been used by many Flash developers to create 3D interactive environment in Flash using Actionscript programming language. It even goes further, as it is being used to create 3D games for consoles such as Nintendo Wii!

Categories: Flash/ActionScript/Flex Tags:

Favorite Programming Quotes 2007

December 4th, 2007 No comments

A list of great programmer’s quotes collected from the web. I like this one:

The sooner we start coding fewer frameworks and more programs the sooner we’ll become better programmers

Categories: Programming Tags: