Thursday, December 21, 2006

Don Box on Google Search API

Don Box weighs in on Google deprecating their SOAP search API and releasing an AJAX one. Choice snippet:

In my mind, this is a significant step backwards.

It's one thing to say move from SOAP to POX or even XML to JSON - the former move trades off extensibility in the spirit of YAGNI, and the latter move trades off SGML synergy for a better impedance match to most people's programming languages.

It's another thing entirely to require someone to use a specific language, runtime, and even local API to get at your service.

No matter how you define "web service," I don't think this newest offering qualifies.

I'm hoping this is just an anomaly and not a trend, lest we all fall back into the world of opaque/closed protocols.

Been there, done that.

Yes, this is Microsoft advocating openness...and Google advocating proprietary-ness. Right on, Microsoft.

Hello World

Check out how convoluted this Hello World is using an anonymous method in C# 2.0:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

namespace HelloWorld
{
    /// 
    /// Declare a delegate that will do something with a string.
    /// 
    public delegate void AcceptString(string s);

    public class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            //create the delegate using an anonymous method
            //in other words, this object is really a method
            AcceptString writeConsole = delegate(string s)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(s);
            };

            //call the object/method
            writeConsole("Hello World!");
        }
    }
}

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

xt9 on the T-Mobile Dash

To switch between xt9 and abc input modes on the Dash, hit [alt], [space].

xt9 is an completion-assist engine for text input. If you start typing "da" it will suggest da, day, damn, dan etc. This can be helpful, except that its behavior can be erratic. In some programs, space selects. And in some programs, the currently selected word is the first suggestion, not the letters you've just typed. This means that you'll hit space on "da" because you mean to insert a space, but instead, since the first selected word is day, day gets inserted, and no space gets inserted since it was used to select. You then end up backspacing, or always glancing at the screen to see what's selected before hitting space, or hitting space space to select and then insert a space. If you switch to abc mode, you can just type, and the letters you push are the letters that show up. Nice and simple.

Friday, December 08, 2006

Symbolic links in Vista

Windows Vista includes a new command, mklink, for creating symbolic links on NTFS. More info. Very cool... although the linux guy buried inside me is quietly sighing, finally.