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How many of you program for fun these days? I realised that I hardly ever do when my workload in my job is high, but when things are going a bit better I just have the urge to code random stuff.

But it made me think – with programming becoming an ever more complicated activity, how many of you still code for fun in your spare time? If you do, what do you code. If you don’t, why not!?

I am really wondering about this since a lot of great open source projects originated with coding in people’s spare time, and if that age is lost then how will the OSS model change in the future? Your thoughts please!

By now you’ve probably noticed that Apple’s supposedly world-changing announcement turned out to be little more than a super-sized version of the iPhone (well, without the phone, so its more of an iPod Touch). While this will be all well and good for those who wanted a jumbo iPhone, for the rest of us who were waiting for the ‘next big thing’, even Steve Jobs’ egotistical confidence in his baby can’t cover up the massive disappointment.

The reason I’m disappointed is that it has taken the concept of a tablet and relegated it to a media player and web browser. Media players come in all shapes and sizes already, and web browsing is a pretty singular task to end up forking $500+ out for.

What it could have been? Why, the biggest productivity boon ever. Imagine a fully-fledged OS on there, capable of running any number of existing productivity apps. Multi-tasking would have added to this immeasurably.

My idea for the perfect tablet would be one which seamlessly links to your workstation PC or Mac. Imagine just dragging a window over to the tablet, getting up and walking to that meeting. Flicking between your presentation notes, organiser and e-mails with a flick of the wrist would make this a truly awesome system.

Something struck me today whilst reading a tweet from a developer I consider to be on top of their game. They had an issue with a framework doing something unexpected and annoying, and after hours of trying to get around it, eventually they had to get a solution. They posted a tweet asking if anyone knew the solution as they suspected it would just be something really simple which they didn’t know.

Helpfully someone responded and pointed them in the right direction, but only then did this developer actually bother to look at the documentation themselves. The solution was simple and was fully documented – so why not check it out first to alleviate all that bother?

While this is a good example of the value of Twitter, I can’t help but feel that the documentation should always be your first port of call. I don’t ask someone until I’ve checked out the documentation for myself. Chances are the docs will have the answer, along with a whole lot of other info which could really help you out. At least that is what I find!

So, next time you have a problem – look it up! Chances are you’ll get more than you asked for.

jQuery 1.4 has been released, and it has brought with it what I think of as the second coming in terms of web scripting. We’ve had JavaScript for years. Ever since Netscape. However, it has taken a long time for people to do really interesting stuff with it, beyond your usual run-of-the-mill price calculators and so on.

JavaScript frameworks began popping up over the last few years with the aim of making it easier to make cool stuff with the added bonus of cross-compatibility, but there were still niggles. jQuery has become my framework of choice and it had the odd issue which annoyed me, in particular the slow-as-hell documentation site and certain speed issues in certain browsers (read: IE6-7).

However, jQuery is now getting ever more backing from major software companies and is being used across the web. The upshot of all of this? The new version has made certain functions up to 10x faster than in jQuery 1.3, which is damn impressive. Coupled with this, they have replaced the dog-slow Mediawiki based documentation site with a speedy Wordpress installation, with complete documentation for every function, packed with examples and tracking of the changes throughout jQuery’s history, way back to 1.0 from 2006.

So you can now see why I think jQuery 1.4 is the second coming – of scripting.

Hmm, there is a running theme with my most recent posts… but never mind!

A new year is a-comin (unless you adhere to a non-Gregorian calendar) and with it comes a load of new goals. Maybe to increase your average work rate (we all have those slow days) or to learn something new. However, without determination and grit, you won’t get anywhere that quickly.

I’ve made myself a promise to finally get to grips with Python on a commercial level for next year, along with expanding my knowledge of working (not just playing) inside a Unix-like system (read: Linux ).

Anyway – enjoy your new year and make sure you don’t slip and fall on your arse on the way home from the pub on Jan 1st. I’ve done it, and it isn’t the best way to begin a new decade!

I know you’re all probably knee-deep in festive munchies by now, but I thought I’d drop a little Christmas cheer on this here blog.

Usually Christmas is one of the few times in a year when a developer can really forget about work. Sure, you don’t work weekends and have time off, but I bet that most of you have found yourself solving problems outside of work time – I know I have!

So, savour the time off, enjoy the copious amounts of food and booze hanging around. Because you just know that when you come back after the holidays, work will begin again!

Sanity. Its an important thing. It stops you shouting at passing cars in the street or smothering yourself in ice cream before hurling yourself down a supermarket aisle. That is why jQuery is so important to me – I value my sanity. Also, Tesco value their stock of Ben & Jerry’s.

1. Cross-browser differences with JavaScript can be largely eliminated. No need to re-code that bit of animation so it works in IE 6 as well as Firefox 3.5, jQuery will handle it all for you. Don’t get me started on the ‘for…in’ construct and how ‘.each()’ saves the day every time.
2. Everything you want to do is even more simple than you can believe. What used to take over a dozen lines of code can usually be expressed in one line.
3. Chaining. It may rile some programmers up, but when you can chain function calls together on a single object, you end up with cleaner, more readable and more semantic code.
4. Plug-ins. There are so many of them around now that just about anything you want to do has already been done at least once. Sure, the jQuery site could use some improvements when it comes to searching the docs or plugin database, but it is all there for you.
5. Light weight. In comparison to MooTools, jQuery is quite hefty. But when you compare it to nearly every other JavaScript framework out there, you will see that when minified, the library is small enough to justify its addition to your code base. Every byte transmitted and processed delays the user seeing your website, so you have to balance the good against the bad!

These are my reasons, what are yours?

If you’re a follower of the antics of “The Big G”, then you will be all over their Chrome browser. Having used it for quite a while now, I can say that it sure is a neat piece of software. Well, it just got neater with the addition of extension support and the opening of the extension library. Hold your horses though – it is only in the “Developer Channel” version (v4 series).

Apart from the odd concern about privacy regarding what you type into the address bar (since Google use it to generate suggestions and therefore can track your browsing habits if they wish), what Google have done is shake up the browser market yet again. Like Firefox did to Internet Explorer, promoting standards-compliance, extensibility and customisation, Chrome is now doing to all the other browsers. It is the fastest one out there by quite some margin, and is more stable too. Security is supposedly beefed up too, and the combination of all these features have spurred Mozilla on to improve their own browser, and quickly.

With Firefox 3.6 boasting even faster JavaScript performance, a new look planned for 3.7 (which seems to closely mirror the stripped-down look of Chrome) and new improvements regarding extension stability, security and performance, the Battle of the Browsers looks to be far from over.

Wordpress is pretty much the de facto blogging platform on the web today. So when a new major release is on the cards, you should sit up and take notice – especially when it has a bunch of tasty new features.

• Trash – you can now move posts and comments to the trash instead of deleting them outright. This may help those of you who have a habit of dealing with comment management en-masse, and when you accidentally delete that comment you wanted to keep!
• Post thumbnails – adding an image for posts is now a lot easier for you designers, with the long-awaited feature finally making its appearance.
• Enhancements to templating – you can now set category-specific, page-specific and tag-specific templates using either the slug or ID of the item you want to template. A thousand template designers just jumped for joy!
• MySQL requirement has gone from v4.0 to v4.1.2 to generally improve performance and reliability.
• A new image editor means you can crop images you upload in the back end of Wordpress – a boon for those on the move.
• Embedding content will be made easier through the use of oEmbed.
• All this, along with the whole raft of performance improvements and bug fixes, along with new functionality!

You can get Wordpress 2.9 RC1 from Wordpress.org today, so give it a whirl!

I was thinking about how each and every programmer likes to play around with things for no real reason other than for the fun of it. Little scripts which help you do a job maybe, or just something to pass the time (like playing with a new web API). Some people do it more than others – after all, if you code all day then maybe you wont feel like doing it all night too!

The question is, though, what do you hack with? Which languages do you like to use, which tools and so on. I was thinking about this since by day I’m usually a web programmer, dealing with stuff like PHP, Perl and even VB or C# on occasion. However, when I’m working on stuff for myself, I tend to use Python. If I’m feeling adventurous I may dabble in a bit of C or C++!

Tools are a different matter, though. Usually a text editor is enough when you’re quickly hacking together some code – the extra weight of a fully-fledged IDE can get in the way and make things a bit harder. How about you?

Lastly, which systems do you use? I have a pretty powerful desktop PC at home, but I also have a netbook. Usually it is the netbook which I will do my hacking on, while watching a DVD or listening to some music. I don’t know about you, but after sitting in an big office chair all day in front of monitors and a desktop whirring away beneath my desk, I kind of appreciate the freedom and ease of use of a small laptop!

Now I’ll throw the question out to all of you – what do you use?