Google Chrome OS – Lets try to be positive

Google’s announcement of stepping into the OS market with Google Chrome has generated quite a stir in the Net. While many have welcomed Google’s new venture, others have been busy with making absurd predictions. Some are talking about what current operating system it’s going to kill? Some saying they don’t need a new OS because they already have one they like. This fellow got more creative and ranted about ‘features’ of the OS before it’s even released! It’s like blaming an unborn baby for being bad in sports?

Personally, I don’t understand the motive behind this kind of negative thinking. Why not think about what new things Chomre might offer, rather than which popular OS it’s going to kill? Let Bill worry about possible market threat of Windows, we should worry about how to use Chrome. You already have the perfect desktop? May be that’s what you think and may be you are right. But should that stop others from trying to innovate, seek answers to problems you never realized you had? Google’s new browser introduced radical concepts in terms  of usability, may be the OS will do the same.

As developers we should be more open minded towards innovations, and throw away this die hard slash fanboy culture.  Technology isn’t religion, you won’t be denied entry to heaven for switching to a newOS/programming language. If nothing else, competition is good. It brings the best out of people. Let’s hope it’ll force Microsoft to make a more secure Windows, or inspire Linux people to create much user friendly desktop systems.

I have a dream : Programmer’s edition

Here are a few things that I would like to see happen in the next few years:

1. Internet Explorer will cease to be the number one browser in the world wide web.

2. Ubuntu will surpass Windows as the most used desktop system.

3. A cease fire will be declared on the Prgramming Language Wars. Java and PHP guys will respect each other and live in harmony.

4. The JavaScript language and its programmers will recieve their true recognition.

To be continued…

Working on Netbeans 6.5, and loving it

Netbeans has recently released version 6.5 of their powerful IDE. It comes with PHP support which can either be downloaded as a plug-in or installed as a stand-alone module. I’ve started working with it few days ago and am really impressed with it. Here are a a few things that I like about it:

User friendly

Creating new projects is really easy. They can be created either from scratch or from existing source files. The interface is clean and useful. It has file and project explorer, a navigation panel to quickly access the methods/members of your class files, a pallet to create HTML pages in drag-and-drop manner and lots more.

Code Assistance

It provides your basic PHP/JavaScript/HTML/CSS code auto-complete features like most other IDEs. Interestingly you can add your PHP framework/library files in the include path of your project and have the IDE suggest methods/members of the classes you have included in your script. It also supports code assistance for JQuery, Prototype and Scriptaculous.

Lightweight

It has a smaller footprint on system resource compared to Eclipse PDT and Aptana Editor, and even its predecessor Netbeans 6.1. It loads much faster than those on my Windows XP machine. I am yet to try it out on Ubuntu.

It free!

Yes. The last but not the least!

The thing that I don’t like about it, that it no longer separates the project specific files from the source files, as the 6.1 did. I work on Windows Desktop connected to a Linux server through Samba share. So I am left with ‘nbproject’ folders on the development server, which I have to manually remove when migrating the sources to production server.

Still Netbeans 6.5 is a decent 8 out of 10 on my book.

Download Link:

http://www.netbeans.org/downloads/index.html

Here’s a couple of screencasts to get started with the IDE:

http://blogs.sun.com/netbeansphp/entry/demo_of_the_php_support
http://blogs.sun.com/netbeansphp/entry/demo_of_the_php_distribution

Rasmus who?

A friend of mine had a hypothesis on common human behavior: they love to argue, even on simplest of issues. If he had seen the discussion thread of Hasin’s recent post, he would have been proud of himself. Hasin wrote that he wouldn’t hire a guy for his company if he didn’t know the name of the inventors of PHP or MySQL or any other technology that the guy had been using for his profession. This was entirely his personal opinion, but it had sparked a lengthy debate in the follow-up discussions. There was a generous use of analogies: toasters, telephones, engines, wheels and what not. Someone even brought Rasmus Lerdorf’s mother into this! The poor lady!

Personally I am leaning a little bit on Hasin’s opinion. If a PHP developer can tell me the name of the inventor of PHP, I won’t hire him right away (or show him the door if he can’t), but I’ll definitely have some respect for him. Having some idea on the development background of a technology is usually considered as a good trait in the developer. Especially if the technology itself is a product of collaboration, such as PHP or MySQL or Linux or whatever. I believe it is called the Ecosystem of the technology.

On a lighter note, it might be possible that some people got upset with the term history on Hasin’s post. Many of us don’t have much fond memories of history classes in high school

P.S. I don’t have anything against history. I like watching the History Channel.