General Development Archive

Eclipse is free universal IDE platform. It is written in Java and available on Windows, Linux, MacOSX, Solaris, and other Java enabled platforms. It comes with a default support for Java, but plugins for other languages such as C, C++, Pascal, C# etc. can be downloaded from here.

File systems need to change. Current file systems are horribly out-of-touch with the realities of what users need to effectively find, organize, and modify their vast quantities of files. Unfortunately, no major consumer OS vendor (Microsoft, Apple, various Linux distos, etc.) has had the foresight, the will, and most of all, the cajones to implement anything more elaborate than a small departure from the standard hierarchical name-space which we all grew up on and should rightfully deplore. Worst of all, the best suggestions for changing the current entrenched standard are incredibly toothless, incredibly feeble.

GCC 3.2.2 is now available from sites listed at here and here. This release is a bug-fix release in the GCC 3.2 series. There are no new major features; however there are many bugs fixed. More detail about this release is available here.

REBOL Technologies today announced its plan to expand development and support for the Apple Macintosh OS X operating system. Beginning with OS X Jaguar (version 10.2), REBOL will port its entire line of products, including View and Pro products as well as Command, SDK (Software Developers Toolkit) and IOS (X Internet Operating System).

"Software is big business. Every year, consumers spend over a hundred billion dollars purchasing shrink-wrap software. For you as a developer, shareware is a cheap, effective means of marketing and distributing your software. Shareware lets the public redistribute your software for free, then pay a registration fee if they like it. Today, nearly all software companies provide some form of free trial version of their software." Read the article at MacDevCenter.

The bug fix version Bochs 2.0.2 has been released. This release is the last planned bugfix release for the 2.0.x series. On other dev news, multiplatform GUI toolkit wxWindows 2.4.0 was recently released.

An article in Baseline covers the increasing reliance that everyday appliances have on complex software, and the potentially disastrous results when that software fails. One prominent example of this is the BMW 745i, which has a sort of uber-control joystick that controls a WindowsCE-based system. This system was so buggy that BMW has done two recalls. The software was too ambitious and too poorly tested, so things like the brake lights not working and the units suddenly changing to metric are the result.

"When old programmers like me (I'm 41) get together we talk about the applications from the old days. What happens to these beauties?" Read the editorial at ZDNews.

A couple of months ago, at the Lightweight Languages Workshop 2002, Matthew Flat made a premise in his talk: Operating system and programming language are the same thing (at least "mathematically speaking"). I find this interesting and has a lot of truth in it. Both OS and PL are platforms on which other programs run. Both are virtualizing machines. Both make it easier for people to write applications (by providing API, abtractions, frameworks, etc.)

"Visual Studio .NET 2003 just came out as a "final beta." I’ve been developing on it for a while now, and I want to point out some of the signature features and tools in this product.2 Read the article at 3Leaf.com.

"The file system is one of the most important parts of an operating system. The file system stores and manages user data on disk drives, and ensures that what's read from storage is identical to what was originally written. In addition to storing user data in files, the file system also creates and manages information about files and about itself." Read the long article by JFS' own Steve Best.

"XP works best for medium-sized teams where a product can be delivered in stages, and where there's freedom to experiment with some of the more controversial techniques," author Ron Jeffries said.

Network Computing Asia published a recap of open source software's progress in 2002, and includes discussion of Linux, Apache, OpenOffice, UnitedLinux, Ogg Vorbis, Lindows.com, Sun, advances in storage options for Linux, and Linux on the desktop.

News.com has published a 2002 in Review piece on the open source segment of the technology industry. Open source had a very good year in 2002, even as (or perhaps because) the rest of the industry suffered financially. Linux made strides in adoption at large companies and saw some major improvements in power and usability, Open Office became usable, Microsoft started to get scared, and Sun finally succumbed to "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." Most of all, even though scores of small companies went out of business as venture funding from the last millennium finally ran out, Open Source software is still around, and flourishing.