General Development Archive

Faces for Laszlo makes use of multiple J2EE (Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition) emerging technologies for rich Internet applications, resulting in a rich user experience on the browser. Through a JSF custom tag library, developers using Faces for Laszlo can integrate OpenLaszlo components into their web application. These components can bind to server-side data that is made available as JavaScript data structures within the browser at runtime.

Groovy took a gigantic leap this past April, with the formal release of a new parser aimed at standardizing the language as part of the JSR process. If you weren't paying attention before, now's the time to start. The new syntax is chock full of enhancements to the language designed for a short learning curve and a big payoff. Resident Groovy practitioner Andrew Glover walks through most important changes to Groovy's syntax and shows you a handy feature you won't find in classic Groovy.

"In this article, I'll attempt to list what I believe to be the most salient points of the economics of programming languages, and describe their effects on existing languages, as well as on those who desire to write and introduce new languages."

The Spec# programming system is a new attempt at a more cost effective way to develop and maintain high-quality software. Spec# is an extension of the object-oriented language C#. It extends the type system to include non-null types and checked exceptions. It provides method contracts in the form of pre- and postconditions as well as object invariants.

The rules of C++ are designed to guarantee that type errors are impossible. Casting, however, subverts the type system and can lead to pesky errors in compiled code. This chapter explains why it's a good idea to forgo casting as much as possible in C++.

Django for Python is the most recently announced of what is becoming a long line of web frameworks inspired by Ruby on Rails. Others that have popped up include MonoRail for .NET & Mono, Subway for Python, Trails for Java, Catalyst and Maypole for Perl. In the context of all these rails derivatives, this article on "Could Rails have been built without Ruby?" is an interesting read.

This tutorial is part I of a three-part series (part II | part III) that takes you from the most basic PHP script to working with databases and streaming from the file system by documenting the building of a document workflow system.

The Question: With the emergence of .NET, J2EE, Python, PHP, et. al, has Perl lost its niche as a scripting glue language? The Answer: Tim O'Reilly gives his two cents.

Excel Software began shipping QuickHelp 2.0 for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. QuickHelp is a development tool for creating and deploying application help on Windows 95 through XP, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X and Linux.

"Last week, I listed what I think is wrong with Make. This week, I offer my suggestions for alternatives," writes Adrian Neagu on his editorial at Freshmeat.

Bochs 2.2.1 has been released on July 8, 2005. You can download it from the Source Forge project page. See the CHANGES file for details on what has changed since version 2.2.

As seen on Slashdot: "At a very late stage Addison Wesley decided not to publish my book, 'The New C Standard: An economic and cultural commentary' I am making the pdf freely available. You can download the pdf (mirror). The organization is rather unusual in that the commentary covers each sentence of the C Standard (actually the latest draft of C0X, excluding library) one by one (all 2022 of them)."

Rapido is a visual profiler for Linux-x86. The program helps in visualizing and describing what's going on in the heart of the program. It helps developers in finding and analyzing bottlenecks in their applications.

Random numbers are utilized in many different areas, ranging from cryptography (in general) to source port and process ID randomization in some operating systems. So what is exactly a random number generator?