Juten Tach,
shame on me for thinking – even just for a second – i could have been the first one with this idea. Of course not 
. As commenter Ben pointed out, there are thoughts about this subject already and they exist for some time now.
There is Intentional Programming. IP has a lot more in it than just the fact, that is proposes to have an abstract representation of code be stored instead of concrete code in text files. But the abstract representation seems to serve as a kind of basis for the whole thing. Intentional Programming is brought forward by Intentional, who are working on a software development system around the ideas of IP. They did a presentation on the DSL DevCon 2009, which is a bit lengthy, but nevertheless awesome. Martin Fowler also wrote down some thoughts on Intentional and their solution.
Then there is SOP and a tool in early alpha stage. Can’t say too much about it, as the guy is a Russian and Google Translate does not a very good job at translating from russion to german
And lastly, there is another good article from Martin Fowler on the subject in general, which goes way beyond, what i am currently thinking about. Means, i am still at the stage of technical ideas and he is already taking the whole thing into the business world as well as Intentional does.
All this is truly inspiring. Would love to see something like this for Flash, i think it also could be the answer for true designer / developer collaboration.
Juten Tach,
there is a topic i’ve been thinking about lately, which is source code and the way we store it currently. Specifically, i do wonder, if storing source code as text is still the right way. Especially for languages, which are not run in an interpreted way, but compiled or pre-compiled i wonder, why we actually store that code in text files.
If you look at all the tools we use, the IDEs, the compilers, UML modelling applications. All these tools currently take textual code and transform it into intermediate object structures, with which they work. Take code highlighting. For being able to have proper code highlighting, tools have to parse the text, understand the very basics of the structure of the code in order to do the highlighting.
Take code completion. The tool has to parse the textual source code into some kind of object structure in order to understand, what references, functions or objects to offer.
Take refactoring. The tool has to parse the textual source code into an object structure in order to change namings, move functions into different classes while updating the references and organizing imports and so on.
Take UML reverse engineering. The tool has to parse the textual source code into an object structure in order to build the represented class hierarchy that serves as the basis for visualizing that hierarchy in UML. All these tools work with object structures or syntax trees rather than with the text itself. Alle these tools have to parse the text over and over again.
In the end, that’s also, what the compiler does before it transforms the whole thing into binary instructions. So, i ask myself, wouldn’t it be more efficient to actually store the source code in some kind of object structure, so that these tools can make direct use of it instead of having to parse it again and again?
Googling this subject (i was not even sure, what to search for, because i couldn’t decide on good search terms), i only found one wiki article, that discussed that topic a little bit, but differently, as that the people there thought about storing source code in databases, which i am not so sure, whether this is the best way. But the thoughts behind that go into the same direction.
I understand, that storing source code in text files has some significant advantages, the most obvious being, that everyone can read text files, because it is so standard and minimal. Also, source code repositories make use of text and can handle it very intelligently.
But i think, since software applications today become more and more complex, wouldn’t development environments, that handle source code as object structures from the very start, be capable of handling that source code more efficiently and even more intelligently? If we would start thinking about source code as being a model and a textual representation of that model simply being one view (UML being another), wouldn’t that provide completely new possibilities for IDEs and the whole ecosystem of software development? In respect to MVC, doesn’t source code stored in text files currently strongly couple the model with the view, something we normally try to avoid as hard as we can? Things like indentation, the use of braces or brackets, specials keywords, semicolons and blank lines, aren’t these just visual decorations, either in order for us to be able to read the code or for the parser to parse it? Imagine, how code could look like, if we wouldn’t need those things, because we wouldn’t need a text parser.
Have you found articles on that topic? Would be curious to see them.
Juten Tach,
yesterday i recognized, that my Google pagerank went from 4 to a flat zero. Some analysis suggested, that since my blog was located in a subdirectory called /blog and since my root startpage did not contain any content at all, my blog startpage inherited the pagerank of my blank root startpage. OK, that /blog subfolder was stupid anyway, so i have re-structured my whole blog and now you can reach it directly via ghost23.de instead of the old ghost23.de/blog.
Of course, i didn’t want to screw up with all the existing incoming links and your bookmarks, so i set up some mod_rewrite rules, that will hopefully cover the old /blog/… links.
In any case, you might want to update your bookmarks (in case, anyone has any bookmarks to this site 
).
Juten Tach,
about 2 months ago i bought the international version of the Amazon Kindle 2. Since then, i have used quite a bit and i thought it might be interesting to others, what my overall impression on the device is so far.
The device
The device feels solid, not really lightweight, but lighter than an average book. I recognize, that i can easily handle it with ether the right or the left hand. The buttons are where the should be, although it is a bit irritating, that the “previous page” button only exists on the left hand side, because it makes me push the home button (which is on the right hand side) by mistake sometimes. I have not used headphones with the device, because i do not listen to music or audio books on it.
The screen works just fine. It takes about one or two seconds for a page to refresh, something other people complain about, but it has never bothered me, because flipping a real page also takes a bit. The “power” button is about small, i find it sometimes unnecessarily tedious to slide it.
The battery
Not much to say here. It works for weeks. Just make sure, you don’t have 3G turned on all the time, because you actually only need it, when buying a book or doing updates.
The display
I am impressed by the screen every time i look at it. The resolution is very good and the quality of the text is brilliant. Images do always have that feeling of being drawn, even for photos, it is a bit weird, but that is, how i see it. You do have to make sure, that you sit in sufficient lighting, because the device has no back light or something.
Reading books
I have not yet bought dozens of books, but i have some very different kinds of books. I have not yet read magazines, because there almost none in German yet. But i have heard, that magazines can be a problem because of layout issues, cannot say anything to that though.
For books, i have read two novels, which just worked great. Even for images, they look very nice, you can also select every image and zoom them to fullscreen. After some minutes, i forget, that i am reading on a digital device, it just feels right. I must say, i use the Kindle mostly en route, like on the train or in the plain. At home, i still mostly read traditional books, because, well, i still have some
I also bought one book on software development. Actually i have the same book as a traditional book and as a Kindle ebook. There are some problems with the electronic version:
- Code Examples: The are normally layouted for the fix width of the original book and thus they wrap badly on the device. You can try to fix it by adjusting the font size, but it still is not a good solution
- Graphics: Sometimes, in the text you read something like: “I have put these two images side-by-side, so that you can see the difference”. Well, that does not work on an ebook, of course, since you can only see one page at a time. Also, books, that make some intense use of layout, will probably not work on an ebook. And something, every author should be aware of anyway, is, that you should not use sentences like: “As you can see on the image below …”. Because on an ebook, you never know, where the image will be.
I also have a bit of a problem to know, where i am. With a traditional book, i can go to the table of contents in no time. For the ebooks, i miss a shortcut for doing just that (perhaps i simply haven’t found it yet ?).
Update: Thanks for the comment; hitting “Menu” and then “Table of Contents” does the job
Other than that, reading on the Kindle works just fine and i can really recommend it.
Software
The Amazon Kindle can only handle its own format, which is a petty. Since a couple of weeks, you can also read PDF files, but i find that rather unusable, because layouts in PDFs are fix, so since the pages are zoomed out to display completely, the font size is normally to small to be read. Unfortunately you cannot even zoom it, although this would be tedious, too.
There are tools for converting epub to the kindle format, though. I have tried them and it seems, as if they work great. One of them is Stanza. It is actually for putting ebooks on the iPhone, but i use it for converting any kind of ebook to the Kindle format.
Wireless
This is one of the big cool features of the Kindle. The international version has 3G and it works great. Wherever i am, i can switch on 3G and surf through the Kindle Store and read samples or buy books. A very nice user experience. To date unfortunately, there are only English books in the Kindle store, i hope, that changes soon.
Conclusion
I am really satisfied with my Kindle. It is slim and light, so it takes almost no space in the bag, so i usually take it with me, when i have my bag with me. I do hope, that there will be German books in the store soon though.
Juten Tach,
it’s nothing new and every speaker knows it, but i once again forgot it, when i held my last talk at the GoodSchool in Hamburg about Technology and the Internet: If you talk for some time, DRINK ! My talk went the whole evening, three hours and at the end, my throat hurt badly.
So note to myself: If you drive, don’t drink, if you talk, DO drink (doesn’t have to be with alcohol though ).
Besides that, i had quite some fun talking about fundamentals of internet technology. One thing, that i always like to point out to people, who start diving into the subject is, that one of the basic ingredients of the internet are: Cables !
There is a very informative map of submarine cables, that build the backbone of the internet today. So it’s not all virtual, the whole net is relying on very real stuff. The global internet map is just as interesting.
