Topic: Software Development
Neocartography, neogeography, the geospatial web: These words and phrases evoke the unfolding drama at the intersection of physical and virtual space. Andrew Turner is in the thick of the action. In this conversation with host Jon Udell he discusses GeoCommons, pocketmaps, collaborative data curation, and the evolution of design in a world of networked spatial and temporal data.
Joel and Jeff discuss what a program manager does, the value (or lack thereof) of a functional spec and vision statement, building developer community, and planning your development time.
Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith discuss the status of Bespin, a project of Mozilla Labs. The company states that Bespin aims to increase developer productivity and promte the use of open standards. Dion and Ben talk about the development of the project and its early prototype. The group also discusses Amazon frontends and how they are being used on the web.
Joel and Jeff discuss the enduring influence of C, the questionable value of the title "Software Architect", and the evolution of Java.
Microsoft's "Oslo" initiative aims to make it easier for developers, for IT professionals, and for ordinary computer users to define, share, and reason about the data representations that underpin software, services, and business logic. In this conversation, Doug Purdy and host Jon Udell discuss modeling, Smalltalk, domain-specific languages, and the ongoing quest for better ways to reduce the impedance mismatch between humans and computers.
Joel and Jeff discuss dealing with incompetent programmers, whether salaries should be public, dealing with technical debt, and programming for small businesses.
Doug Kaye joins Phil and Scott to discuss the recently launched SpokenWord.org, a free service that helps you find, manage and share audio and video spoken-word recordings. In addition to giving a basic description of the site, Doug also discusses the technical aspects of the project, including how it was developed and what kind of challenges he is facing now that it is operational.
In this Q&A session the Rails core team discuss trends in the Rails community, the challenge of SproutCore, framework competition, and how to pick a Ruby implementation. Along with insights into the team's personal technology interests and the folly of micro-optimisation, the dangers of over abstraction and other areas are explored.
Mark Baker has always worked with distributed systems, starting with DCE and CORBA. When he learned about the Web's REST architectural style, he embraced it as a better way. When the Web Services movement veered away from key RESTful principles -- a uniform interface, hyperlinked representations -- he campaigned vigorously for them. Now, he tells host Jon Udell, REST has won the web, although not yet the enterprise.
Joel and Jeff discuss ethical email, backup strategies, how to learn new programming languages, and dealing with underperforming developers.
