Links published on August 1, 2006
Can Your Programming Language Do this?
Joel points out how darned nifty functional programming can be, and how earth-shatteringly important it can become to certain business models.
Surveying open-source AJAX toolkits
This is almost a case study in how not to write a review of technical products. The reviewer apparently knows very little actual JavaScript and did very little homework on some of the reviewed toolkits, and it shows again and again. To take a choice quote:
The Prototype library is a set of basic, low-level tools aimed at programmers. It has clean, simple functions, all given single-letter names to speed downloading.
(emphasis added)
Perhaps he could also recommend straightening the cable which carries your Internet connection, so that the ones will have an easier path (they don’t handle curves as well as the zeroes).
Form Widgets
Justin waxes philosophical on the appropriateness of HTML form elements in certain situations. Oddly enough, this comes just as I’m starting to tackle some UI problems related to a many-to-many relation.
Rapid prototyping tools should NOT generate code
A relatively short piece which manages to say a lot, including this juicy tidbit:
What does code generation have to do with creating, testing, and iterating prototypes? I think they’d be better off creating better prototyping tools.