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Working from home, OSCON, AJAX, Groovy and global warming
Posted by davidvc on July 24, 2006 at 08:51 PM | Comments (5)
I work from home most of the time. No sitting in a car in hours of
traffic. Fresh organic food from my own refrigerator. A nice office
with natural light, colorful walls, lots of space. And I forget how
great this all is until I head off to the
airport (this time to OSCON
2006 in Portland). Ugly carpets and fluorescent lights in the
airport. Of course, the flight is delayed. I don't
get into my hotel until 2am. The room smells of smoke, is tiny, and
completely sterile, the AC barely works and I lie awake most of the
night sweating in my sheets. “Interesting” breakfast at
the hotel restaurants, more fluorescent lights in the tutorials all
day, more interesting food for lunch, impossible network connection.
I can't imagine how road warriors do it. They must build some kind
of mental, emotional and spiritual wall inside so it doesn't affect them. I am trying very hard to stay away from the TV so I don't turn into a pale, untanned mass of protoplasm.
But it does make me think that the open source movement is
allowing more and more of us to choose a different lifestyle, where
we can stay at home, be with our families and pets, eat better; all
this and making the environment and the traffic just a little bit
better. Yes, it's true, I sometimes miss the face-to-face
interactions, but the open source movement has also engendered a
number of creative ways of staying in touch, from Wikis to blogs to
podcasts and webcasts. And I actually get to “meet” more
people through my open source work than I ever would have done
working just within my own company.
Much as I dislike the travel and hotel experience, I have been getting a lot out of the conference itself already. Today and tomorrow are tutorials.I'm trying to learn as much as I can about JavaScript,
AJAX, Rails and other web technologies. I have been a database and server
weenie for so much of my career, but my interest on embedding the
database in the browser has thrown me head-first into web
technologies. It's a different world, one which is both full of
creativity and full of hacks. There are times when I shake my head at
the contortions web developers have to go through to build compelling
and cool applications, while at the same time dealing with
non-trivial issues like security, scalability and maintainability.
It makes me value all the tools that simplify, simplify, simplify
the poor developer's life. In the AJAX world, it seems like the
component libraries are key. Things like dojo
and prototype and jMaki
and script.aculo.us. Ruby
on Rails also seems to be a lifesaver. I would love to see
something like Ruby running in the browser, but right now it's just
JavaScript and yes, Java, (although there are large camps who still
won't touch Java in the browser with a ten-foot pole).
If the rumors are true and Java is going to be open-sourced, then
maybe some folks will spend some time to fix some of the issues
with Java in the browser, and folks will start looking at it
again for the browser, if only as a virtual machine to run dynamic languages like
Ruby and Groovy.
I have
just started dipping my toes into these languages, but what
encourages me about Groovy is it appears to have many of the benefits of Ruby,
but at the same time it takes advantage of the compatibility,
security and large base of APIs that is available in Java. That and
the fact that Groovy can run in the browser (on top of the Java VM),
whereas, at least today, that's not possible with Ruby.
By the way, here is an interesting blog
by Jon Tirsen comparing Groovy and Ruby. And of course, here's
Hani's
bileblog about Groovy. Where did this guy come from? He reminds
me of the old SNL skit “Point/Counterpoint” between Dan
Aykroyd and Jane Curtin (“Jane, you ignorant slut”).
Did I mention it's hot here? Of course, it's hot everywhere. Somebody let me know when the ice caps melt.
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Comments
Comments are listed in date ascending order (oldest first) | Post Comment
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I've not yet had any use in applications I've written through work to use scripting engines, although I've always kept an eye on both JavaScript, BeanShell, and of course Groovy, as I can see plenty of use cases in potential future projects.
Groovy in particular has come a long way recently (the other two have been around longer). These blog entries you refer to in your post date from 2004, and when Groovy was submitted as a JSR, it was clear that some of those involved weren't as committed as they should've been and that it lacked direction, and as such there was a lot of fairly valid criticism at that time. The current project leader, Guillaume has done an excellent job of putting it back on track (I would've said "on the (g)rails" but I'm above that sort of "humour" ;-)), and the delays are understandable as Groovy development is done in their spare time, not with significant time or resources from a corporation.
OT: I think you did indeed say that it was hot... Crossing the Atlantic won't help, it's pretty toasty here too...
- Chris
Posted by: chris_e_brown on July 25, 2006 at 12:51 AM
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how do you make a living doing open source
Posted by: caroljmcdonald on July 25, 2006 at 06:54 AM
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David,Your "Road Warrior" comments are terribly familiar.I've been looking at some new opportunities lately, some of which are really attractive, but they require 80% travel, which is completely reasonable since face-to-face time with customers is crucial if you're trying to understand their business, but I can't say that I'm overjoyed.On the one hand, connectivity with my loved ones back home is much easier now (than it was 10 years ago), but the travel experience is far worse. Crowded airports, stressed travellers, delays, security lines, dirty planes... Just plain unpleasant.Perhaps improvements in "remote presence" tools will help reduce the need for travel... I'd be interested in hearing more about the tools that you use, and how you use them.-JohnR
Posted by: johnreynolds on July 25, 2006 at 06:57 AM
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caroljmcdonald - copy and paste your query into Google (like this) and you'll get an answer... (next time, ask the question yourself in this way first...)
In the case of one person I know, he does it for fun/for a challenge in his spare time, and his skills and knowledge allow his employer to pay him, as he gets sent out on contracts using the open-source software he develops and the related skills he uses along the way. Other people I know gain a wider awareness of their product because it's freely available and sell services to a small proportion of users who want support; that small proportion is bigger than the overall target might have been if it was closed source.
Posted by: chris_e_brown on July 25, 2006 at 07:32 AM
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chris: Thanks for the update on Groovy, that's encouraging. I didn't know it has been around so long or I would have looked more closely at the dates of my links.
carol: I'm lucky in that I work for a big company that is supportive of open source projects (Sun Microsystems). I guess it's kind of like an artist under the commission of some rich noble :)
johnr: I don't use anything fancy, mostly email and the phone, but I also find IM, especially IRC, quite valuable when I need it. Blogs and podcasts are a more asynchronous form of communication but they help me feel part of a larger community. I also like the screencasts that people do (like this great one Ludo does for jMaki), they really help because it involves other modes besides just reading. The open source community does not seem to do much around video communication, though. I wonder if it's because a lot of us like the freedom of not having to get all presentable when we go to work.
By the way, right as I was writing this comment I got a call from a recruiter saying he was looking for someone who was an experienced Java programmer who liked to do lots of travel. I laughed and said that definitely wasn't me. I explained how I was a gray-haired old fart with a wife and kids and he needed some young guy or girl who was unattached and wanted to see the world. He said actually he also gets some interest from those with families, like this one guy with five kids. Now with five kids, I can kind of understand :)
Posted by: davidvc on July 25, 2006 at 09:10 AM
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