Another one!

First Enron, then WorldCom, now Xerox. Who next?

Open source web application servers.

Open-source servers today discusses a number of interesting web app platforms.

I use Apache and Tomcat at work. Java is my company's platform of choice, and we are doing a lot of servlet stuff. Seems to work beautifully. Small footprint too - WebSphere is a monster.

JBoss and Enhydra I will look at further - I'm just reading up on J2EE now. (Java for the Web with Servlets, JSP, and EJB. Good. A big book, but that's 'cos it covers a lot.)

I have mentioned Zope before.

(Via Daily Python URL)

A woman is special

At wigu.com.

A woman is special... no matter how much she weigh,
Without women i'd get fat and drink cold beer all day!

Women are the only reason... a man has manners at all,
Without a woman alive I'd never make a telephone call!!

Women act pretty, but don't be misled...
There's a demon that lives inside of her head,
And crushing men's souls is how it is fed,
And it will not stop until we are dead.

(Via iamcal)

Ultimate Soccer Showdown

Bored by the World Cup? I know I am. Get your own back.

Other funny sites - Shake your Tic Taks and Where's Waldo?

Hawkin's Bazaar

Hawkin's Bazaar is a superb looking online shop for toys and games.

Great stuff for kids!

The case for static types

The case for static types at developerWorks is an interesting counterpoint to Cameron Laird and Kathryn Soraiz's article.

I'm beginning to think that the thing that I dislike most about Java is not the static typing. I think it is mainly down to the fact that you cannot override the built-in operators ('+', '-' and so forth).

This, combined with the fact that the common data structures (Vectors, Hashtables and so on) are not built-ins, but come as part of the standard library. It seems to me that 80% plus of my code involves these data structures. Due to the fact that every operation requires an explicit method call, the code is very verbose. They don't call Java 'Object Oriented COBOL' for nothing!

In Python (You knew I was going to get on to Python, didn't you!) you can override operators, and high level data strictures are built-in. So you can iterate through any sequence with a simple:

for item in sequence:

    item.whatever()

Lists and files are both sequences, so both can be iterated with this syntax. And because you can override operators, you can make sequences of your own simply by overriding a couple of methods, and then process them with this syntax. Beautiful.