Saturday, June 30, 2007

Web frameworks compared.

Nice video from Nasa comparing the J2EE, Rails, Zope, Turbo Gears and DJango web frameworks.

Conclusion? Java sucks for webapps because it doesn't allow for quick turnarounds for the UI. If you really want to create webapps your going to have to learn a new language.

I have to agree here. Using Java/Hibernate and XML for configuration starts to get tiring after a while.

All my home projects are now in Rails and ruby isn't exactly rocket science.

iPhone - The Second coming

Well the iPhone has finally arrived. I went to my local Apple store just before midnight to check it out and it was surprisingly busy. I was fortunate that I didn't have to wait to get my mitts on it. :)

Of course I loved it to bits. You can really see how things will change in the future. Google maps was cool. Safari and web browsing was pleasant. (Not sure if I was on Edge or Wifi). The pinch zoom effect was intuitive.. but the virtual keyboard will take some time to get the hang of.

I've always been less than impressed by the mobile phones currently out there. They all seem to have mostly the same functionality but somehow haphazardly bolted together. They mostly have web browsers, music players and applications, but how many of these features are actually used?

I remember playing with my wifes Samsung i730. It had bluetooth, wifi and the so-called fast EV-DO network. Firstly it had windows mobile (or whatever they call it now) running on it, which was clunky as always. The phone had buttons *ALL* over the side. Just the act of picking it up, caused you to press several buttons which changed the volume and turned things on and off. I refused to use it because of this.

Apple again has found that people want advanced features but in a simplistic innovative way. Kudos.