For me, programming languages fit in 3 categories. First category of languages are chosen by yourself because it's a joy to program in it.. *cough* Python *cough*. Second category of languages have a reputation for being extremely efficient, and, let's face it, even with moore's law, efficiency will continue to matter in certain contexts. So you really don't have much choice but to choose one... *cough* C *cough*. Now, the third category of languages basically chooses you cuz it's the "HOT" language of the time. The industry WANTS you to know it, and everyone is talking about it all the time. For many, that language is Java. I've dodged many opportunities to really dig into Java. I've used it for a couple of years back when version 1.2 was out. Then I didn't want to go back. Why? Cuz I don't find it fun to write in it... I take joy in crunching out highly optimized C code, and I also take joy in writing architecturally correct python code that's been beautifully refactored so that it's re-usable, easy to use and easy to understand. Java? That kinda sits in between and doesn't appeal to me very much. Write once, run everywhere? That's kinda cool, but not terribly important for me, since the types of applications that I wrote that required cross-platform capabilities didn't require blazing speed. So I could just use python and be done with it. :P Well, where am I going with this? Ah... yes... The new site is done completely in C#. Yup, the devil's language. Mostly because this site runs on a IIS server box and VB.NET just gives me the shivers (Don't even get me started on managed C++, I have enough hatred towards ANSI C++), and because I had already given Java a chance. Do I like C#? It's the exact same feeling I had with Java, but something tells me C# has somethnig that Java doesn't have... *cough* Microsoft *cough* (man, I'm coughing a lot today, eh?). Well, we'll see...

So the new version of my homepage code-named "L.M.N.T (Look ma, no tables)" is 85% complete with a new rendering engine, a new ment-O-matic distribution for the ASP.NET platform, total separation of content, presentation (also split layout and styling) and logic, more attention to ease of navigation, and of course there are NO tables. :D It took me about 3 full days of hacking, and I just have a few more templates to write. Phew~ I'm gonna take a break now, and I'll finish up the site next weekend and we can talk about the architecture then.


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So I was at a portfolio presentation of somebody who was interviewing at MAYA for a Senior Interaction Designer's position. He talked about how a set of graphics toolkit was developed to be easy to understand by allowing the tutorial for the toolkit to guide the design. What that means is that you'd write the tutorial FIRST and make it extremely simple and clear for the novice user to understand, THEN develop the toolkit based on the tutorial. If the tutorial becomes too convoluted or lengthy your design needs to change. Kinda interesting in a way cuz I think that directly ties into what happens when one does test-first programming in eXtreme programming situations. I just might make this another requirement for myself. :)


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Has anyone else noticed that Safari doesn't render anything until it has finished receving the top-level resource? I quickly hacked up a stupid webserver that sends out a series of text in chunked encoding and intermittently sleeps for 1 second in between each chunk. In my browser of choice (that would be mozilla variants and Firebird to be specific) it does the right thing... which is rendering the first bit of text, waiting for the next chunk, render the next chunk, wait, etc... However, on Safari it waits for the entire content of the text to be downloaded before anything appears on screen... I suppose this may not be a huge issue, but it just doesn't seem right to me... I put up a little comment on Surfin' Safari, but I doubt it it will get any attetion... Oh, well...


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Summer has officially begun for moi, and here are the projects on my table for the summer as a geek
  • project "eggland"
  • revamp djslim.com's site rendering engine and update the templates using CSS2 (i.e. NO TABLES)
  • provide RSS feed of djslim.com site content
  • additional QA work for beijingers.org
  • read up on more books for my MBA thesis
BRING IT ON!!!!


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