Topic: Software Development
In this fireside chat with Andreas Kluth, S. Ramadorai discusses India's rise in the IT world and compares it to China's emerging role. India has gone from being perceived as a non-participant in the high-tech industry, to a major resource, to an innovation engine and a market. Ramadorai also discusses the shift in IT from a products focus to an industry that he argues is based on knowledge and services.
Stephen O'Grady, analyst for RedMonk, argues that the trend in web technology, as well as other products, is gearing toward simplicity. Clients often demand more features and functionality, but successful products continue to be characterized by simplicity in design and simplicity in function. O'Grady argues that PHP is a language that inherently supports simplicity in coding creating simpler, lighter programs with less code.
In a fascinating synthesis, Robert "r0ml" Lefkowitz polishes up his exposition on the evolving meaning of the term 'open source'. This intellectual joy-ride draws on some of the key ideas in artificial intelligence to probe the role of language, meaning and context in computing and the software development process. Like Wittgenstein's famous thought experiment, the open source 'beetle in a box' can represent different things to different people, bearing interesting fruit for philosophers and software creators alike.
What exactly is Interaction Design and how can it benefit your next product or service? Dan Saffer, Senior Interaction Designer for Adaptive Path, peels back the onion layers of the Interaction Design discipline; a fairly new practice which is still taking shape. In this presentation, he defines what an interaction designer does, and how the practice fits into the larger scope of the User Experience community.
Hyperic HQ, a platform for managing web infrastructure, was released under an open source license this summer. With 15,000 downloads in two months, the move is already helping improve software quality in unexpected ways. Hyperic CEO Javier Soltero talks about moving his product from a perpetual commercial license to the GPL plus subscription-only proprietary extensions for enterprises.
Charles Macmillan, Open Source Project Officer for the European Commission's Information Society Technologies Unit, gives an overview of IST as a research program, what the commission's software tech unit is doing and what might come next. Europe's software industry is very limited, and IST is therefore working to support the development of more open and competitive software in Europe. From the 2006 Open Source Business Conference,
PHP is progressing from the typical small- and medium-sized business project to the enterprise. Panelists discuss the reasons why companies like PayPal, Filemaker and StepUp Commerce are choosing PHP for in-house and customer application development. The recurring theme throughout is time to market. The true value in using PHP is the speed with which a solution can be created and released. Development time is reduced to a fraction of what is required by the more complex, proprietary development platforms such as Java/JSP and .Net.
Ubuntu, the popular Linux distribution, brought together a team with strong experience in building communities, fast-paced project growth, and getting things done - the open source way. At the 2006 Open Source Convention, Jeff Waugh describes how Ubuntu, one of the fastest growing projects in the world, dealt with building its community. Amongst the subjects covered are the importance of shared core principles and the value of a benevolent dictator.
PHP developers are often confronted with performance, scalability and security. Zend Platform was released in response to developer concerns allowing them to manage high-performance, robust PHP deployments. Zend has spent the intervening time improving the product. At the Zend/PHP Conference & Expo 2005, Zeev Suraski, Zend co-founder and co-architect of PHP, details the latest capabilities of Zend Platform and provides tips on how to best take advantage of the product.
What does it takes for an open source project to thrive? Aaron Farr outlines the most important factors for success while describing how Apache's Incubator program works. Projects need to demonstrate a strong, diverse community of commiters (developers and users who know how to deal with growth, change and conflict) before they become top-level projects. Aaron explains how building a community of people who can communicate successfully is more critical than just good code.
