Marco Tech Blog

November 18, 2009

Links: War for Web, Image Swirl, Delphi 2010 Review

Too little time and too many interesting links, so I'm summing that up in a single post.

Too little time and too many interesting links, so I'm summing that up in a single post, even if the three topics are totally unrelated.

Tim O'Reilly on "The War of the Web"

Tim O'Reilly blogged about "The War of the Web". I guess this is something that might become a milestone, as web giants like Facebook and Microsoft (and Google, even if to a lesser extent -- at or least more subtle one) are trying to turn the web into their web. A must read article for anyone looking into web technologies and social networks, and a relatively short one. As a use of social web sites, I hate those that try to "confine" you... and let see how this post looks on Facebook (where it appears both through the RSS feed and the Twitter title posting).

Delphi 2010 Review

There has been a very nice review of Delphi 2010 that is worth mentioning. It is on TechRepublic at http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=1924. Not taht is is terribly technical, but it is quite positive... and it is nice to see the company push for reviews rather than hide them (as it happened).

Delphi Image Swirl

Google Lab's Image Swirl is impressive, in both the capability to notice similarities among totally diverse images and the graphical presentation. This is one of the "pages" or "swirls" you can see when searching "Delphi", which is all things Delphi, including the Greek city, automotive tool, and all. But there are Delphi boxes and images, including a couple of yours truly.

PS. Very nice that while you "swirl" the URL changes so you can use it to refer to a specific "configuration". Seems a new way of combining AJAX with URL persistence.

posted by marcocantu @ 4:32PM | 2 Comments [0 Pending]

2 Comments

Links War for Web, Image Swirl, Delphi 2010 Review

A lame review, I'd call it: "Delphi is a tool for 
writing native applications, and as a result, you are 
expected to work with native APIs"
If it meant Delphi does not need the .NET framework 
he said it in the most scaring way for any non-Delphi 
developer. Surely most will think about the C way of 
building Windows apps. BUt he's right when he says so 
much is missing from the RTL/VCL... and then yes, 
only native APIs may save your day <g>

Comment by Luigi D. Sandon on November 18, 19:34

Glad you liked the review

Marco -

Glad that you liked the review! I was pretty darned 
happy with my tests of Delphi 2010, as my article 
made clear. As an IDE, it is quite productive, but I 
recognize that the Pascal language and working with 
native code are not for everyone.

I do wish the article was more technical as well, but 
in all honesty, there are a couple of factors 
limiting that:

* Article length - readers tune out past 1,000 - 
2,000 words.

* Time to write the article - a much more in-depth 
article takes a LOT more time to produce, which means 
that the article might not come out for another month 
or two. As it is, the article was about a month after 
product launch. :(

* Size of product - Delphi (and any other 
IDE/development framework) takes literally YEARS of 
use to really explore the nooks and crannies. I've 
been using Visual Studio since version ".NET" (in 
2001), and I *still* learn new things in it, based on 
my current needs. It would be impossible to really 
walk through the entire feature set and write 
competantly about it unless I had been using Delphi 
for a few years.

* Reader interest - my experience has been that my 
readers prefer to read a summary that contains my 
opinions on a product, and if I have a favorable 
impression, they will try it out for themselves. I 
think that does a product I like a lot more favors 
than giving a lot of information without much 
guidance.

Thanks again for the kind words!

J.Ja

Comment by Justin James [http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/] on November 18, 19:43

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