Good to hear that Sun is finally serious about dynamic languages on Java. It’s no secret that I don’t like Java. I don’t want to start a holy war here – it’s just simply my personal preference, I don’t like the ’smell’ and ‘feel’ of it. But it would be great to write stuff in Python and get it running on top of the Java platform. That would surely be good for everybody. It would make more sense if all the big corporates also tried using Jython or Groovy – it would lead to much happier and saner programmers and better products as well. Oh, and it’ll run on the Java platform.

Then again, I agree with Dumbill that the lack of activity on IronPython is discomforting.

Btw, don’t forget to read that first link – It must’ve been awesome to have Larry Wall (creator of Perl), Guido van Rossum (creator of Python), Dan Sugalski (Parrot) and Samuele Pedroni (Jython), James Strachan (Groovy) all in the same room and discussing dynamic languages!

Here’s a paragraph from an article in the Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine Online:

"To learn Python, I’d start with Core Python Programming by Wesley Chun. The online documentation and tutorial is also terrific. A great free tutorial called “A Byte of Python” is available at http://www.python.g2swaroop.net."

Here’s the one stop shop for all your Longhorn news and information – Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows: Longhorn Activity Center

I love the screenshots put up here.

Another cool article from Extremetech. This time on Longhorn 4072 – the WinHEC build.

MS is making good progress on it, but has a long way to go. I am amazed at the progress they are making and how well they are integrating the innumerable components of Longhorn. This is a very ambitious project indeed and it will determine the future of MS. It looks like to me that Longhorn is gonna leave a Long-lasting impression on all of us!

I’m reading a very interesting article on the next version of C#. It’s fascinating. I seriously wonder why Java does not make strides like this, especially with supposedly much more widespread support than C# and .NET??

What does the open community lack in making such huge innovations? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the open source community lacks innovation – it doesn’t, see the Dashboard to understand what I mean. What I am trying to say is that I feel there are no major initiatives such as new platforms like .NET by this community.

Is the widespread nature of this community the very reason for this? Or is it just that Microsoft is really good at integrating good ideas and packaging it into a neat manner like Longhorn? Why isn’t there anything to match Visual Studio .NET yet?

I am at a loss to understand the answer to this question.

Shocking but true! Microsoft has released the WiX toolkit as open source. WiX stands for Windows Installer XML (WiX) developer tool. The software has been released under an IBM license.

The shocking thing is that they are releasing it as open source AND they are releasing it on SourceForge.net – the world’s largest Open Source software development website!

Is Microsoft just pretending to be the good guy or does it seriously want to test the waters ?!?!

I know this is too much, but, if an open-source Longhorn was released – I’d have a heart attack due to pure excitement .

As you must already know, Microsoft’s next-generation Windows which has been code-named Longhorn has been making lot of waves. They’ve been making lot of innovative strides in this Longhorn and they have a lot of cool names for many of Longhorn components as well.

One important thing to note about Longhorn is that it is completely based on .NET. All the Longhorn APIs will be in .NET and hence .NET can soon become the preferred development platform. This is my case for pushing Mono to become the preferred development platform as well since (atleast theoretically) Mono programs will be cross-platform and will run on .NET and Longhorn as well.

Coming back to Longhorn, I was reading some fascinating articles today:

• Avalon graphics model
• WinFX
• Bloghorn: A Blog Reader Built in XAML
• ObjectSpaces – a new convenient way of accessing databases
• The Official Microsoft Longhorn website
• System.Help
• Longhorn Screenshots
• Longhorn Roadmap for Avalon
• Indigo – The Longhorn Communication subsystem
• WinFS – The Longhorn Storage subsystem

I’ve been completely bowled over by all these articles. I just had to add LonghornBlogs.com to my list of feeds on my Bloglines account!

Looking from the open source angle, does Linux/FreeBSD/KDE/GNOME/…. have anything to match Longhorn? I personally feel that they can’t match Longhorn yet, maybe Mono will counter that in future but I can confidently say that only when Mono developers are innovating and not just playing catch-up with the Longhorn people. Of course, there is still time till 2006!

This reminds me of a joke I read somewhere on Slashdot:

Microsoft: Where do you want to go today?
Linux: Where do you want to go tomorrow?
BSD (which also means OS X): Are you guys coming or what?!?