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LWN.net (Free subscription) | 08/28/2008
InfoWorld's Neil McAllister investigates a bug with Perl's object instantiation on Red Hat Linux. " To make a long story short, he got rid of the Perl executable that came with his CentOS installation, compiled a new one from stock source code, and the bug disappeared. Clearly, the Perl hackers are blameless in this case. The fault lies squarely with Red Hat for distributing a buggy version...
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CentOS, Linux and Operating Systems (Free subscription) | 08/21/2008
snydeq writes “Fatal Exception’s Neil McAllister questions the wisdom of standardizing on a single language in the wake of the ECMA Committee’s decision to abandon ECMAScript 4 in favor of the much less ambitious ECMAScript 3.1, stunting the future of JavaScript. Had the work continued, McAllister argues, it could have ushered in an era of [...]
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TechBlogger (Free subscription) | 08/21/2008
snydeq writes “Fatal Exception’s Neil McAllister questions the wisdom of standardizing on a single language in the wake of the ECMA Committee’s decision to abandon ECMAScript 4 in favor of the much less ambitious ECMAScript 3.1, stunting the future of JavaScript. Had the work continued, McAllister argues, it could have ushered in an era of [...]
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InfoWorld Daily (Free subscription) | 08/21/2008
Growing less convinced that IT is approaching Web-based applications the right way, Neil McAllister questions the very concept of an all-purpose programming language that's designed by committee. "If nobody ever managed to come up with the ultimate, perfect language for systems programming, what makes us think we can do it for the Web?" he asks in Was JavaScript a mistake? "As Web developers,...
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Slashdot (Free subscription) | 08/21/2008
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister questions the wisdom of standardizing on a single language in the wake of the ECMA Committee's decision to abandon ECMAScript 4 in favor of the much less ambitious ECMAScript 3.1, stunting the future of JavaScript. Had the work continued, McAllister argues, it could have ushered in an era of large-scale application development that...
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CentOS, Linux and Operating Systems (Free subscription) | 08/08/2008
snydeq writes “Sure ‘legacy systems archaeologist’ ranks as one of the 7 dirtiest jobs in IT, but COBOL skills might see a scant revival in the wake of California’s high-profile pay-cut debacle. After all, as Fatal Exception’s Neil McAllister points out, new code may in fact be more expensive than old code. According to an [...]
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TechBlogger (Free subscription) | 08/07/2008
snydeq writes “Sure ‘legacy systems archaeologist’ ranks as one of the 7 dirtiest jobs in IT, but COBOL skills might see a scant revival in the wake of California’s high-profile pay-cut debacle. After all, as Fatal Exception’s Neil McAllister points out, new code may in fact be more expensive than old code. According to an [...]
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InfoWorld Daily (Free subscription) | 08/07/2008
Fatal Exception blogger Neil McAllister offers his own take on the current state of COBOL when he writes, "If you can program in COBOL, the state of California might like to talk to you." But when you get past all the politics and the $177 million the state projects it will spend to upgrade its old systems, there's a technology twist in all this: new code is more expensive than old code....
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Planet Intertwingly (Free subscription) | 08/01/2008
I am not a fan of FUD, but I do like begrudging pragmatism, which is why I enjoyed this Fatal Exception piece from Neil McAllister. I reported recently on the physical challenges of getting data back from a cloud once you’d stored it there, but here Neil, pointing to a review of cloud computing services, focuses [...]
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InfoWorld Daily (Free subscription) | 07/31/2008
Someday, application developers will need to sit down and puzzle out best practices for the new, cloud-driven paradigm. But for now, Neil McAllister explains, just understanding the legal ramifications of these services should be enough to give potential enterprise customers pause. "The agreements are complex, nuanced, and occasionally vague. And in most cases the terms are stacked decidedly...
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OS News (Free subscription) | 07/18/2008
Neil McAllister deliberates the question of public disclosure of open source vulnerabilities, contrasting Ounce Labs' announcement of security vulnerabilities in the Spring Framework for Java with Linus Torvalds recent missive on the Linux kernel development mailing list. Sure, vulnerability bulletins raise awareness of real danger, but they also distract from other productive activities....
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QNX (Free subscription) | 07/18/2008
Neil McAllister deliberates the question of public disclosure of open source vulnerabilities, contrasting Ounce Labs' announcement of security vulnerabilities in the Spring Framework for Java with Linus Torvalds recent missive on the Linux kernel development mailing list. Sure, vulnerability bulletins raise awareness of real danger, but they also distract from other productive activities....
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Lori MacVittie (Free subscription) | 07/14/2008
Neil McAllister @ InfoWorld has a great blog post on The Web development skills crisis . He postulates at that "The most agile developers, however, are those who approach programming with a firm grounding in computer science." Amen, brother. Say it again, only this time loud enough my son hears you. The basic premise of Neil's post revolves around the frenetic rate at which programming...
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CentOS, Linux and Operating Systems (Free subscription) | 07/12/2008
snydeq writes “Fatal Exception’s Neil McAllister raises questions regarding Web development skills in an era of constant innovation. Sure, low barriers to entry give underdog technologies ample opportunity to thrive without the backing of name-brand vendors. But doesn’t this fragmentation of the Web development market put undue pressure on developers to specialize? Choosing one tool [...]...
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TechBlogger (Free subscription) | 07/11/2008
snydeq writes “Fatal Exception’s Neil McAllister raises questions regarding Web development skills in an era of constant innovation. Sure, low barriers to entry give underdog technologies ample opportunity to thrive without the backing of name-brand vendors. But doesn’t this fragmentation of the Web development market put undue pressure on developers to specialize? Choosing one tool [...]...
