Monday April 05, 2004

While I'll miss Jeff Kent's contributions to the Giants, it's hard not to take a little pleasure in seeing a little late inning beat down with Bond's 3 run HR in the 8th (number 659 for his career, Say Hey!)

Happy Opening Day! ( Apr 05 2004, 09:21:23 PM PDT ) Permalink


Building software could be like layering a cake, which could be good I did a little write up on Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP), titled "Aspect Oriented Programming: An Introduction," I'm more than just a tad stoked that it's the lead story currently on CMP/TechWeb's DeveloperPipeline (ya know, I'm just having a great day today, there's lots of good stuff happening).

Anyway, I believe we are entering an age of non-intrusive frameworks (unlike traditional J2EE) that serve as lightweight application servers, or lightweight containers, if you will. AOP isn't a piece of software or a container, it's a different and complementary approach to ye olde Object Oriented Programming. AOP is about layers. It's about being able to layer on supporting functionality and weave it into your core functionality. AFAIC, Sun is put on notice: your big overdone API's for J2EE aren't necessarily the best way to develop all of the components for a scalable OO architecture.

A lot of the things that J2EE provides (such as security and persistence) might be better served as application aspects, layered onto the core OO model. And technologies such as Hibernate are here to help as well.

Layers involve complexity, but that's not a bad thing. Why, there are even bits of wisdom on the matter to be found in everybody's favorite DreamWorks feature film:

SHREK: For your information, there's a lot more to ogres than people think.
DONKEY: Example?
SHREK: Example? Okay, um, ogres are like onions.
DONKEY: [Sniffs] They stink?
SHREK: Yes. No!
DONKEY: They make you cry?
SHREK: No!
DONKEY: You leave them out in the sun, they get all brown, start sprouting' little white hairs.
SHREK: No! Layers! Onions have layers! Ogres have layers! Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers. [Sighs]
DONKEY: Oh, you both have layers. Oh. [Sniffs] You know, not everybody likes onions. Cake! Everybody loves cakes! Cakes have layers.
SHREK: I don't care... what everyone likes. Ogres are not like cakes.

I'm not a big TV watcher but I really dig HBO's new series, Deadwood, it's such a departure into the heavy metal underbelly of human tendencies and vices, I can't stop watching it.

The dialogue gets a little tiresome with the "f*ck'ing this" and "c#ck s*cker that" every other sentence. Don't get me wrong, I can cuss like a sailor, when inspired to (I have colleagues who can attest to this fact), it just gets a little old having it be such a dominant aspect of the script. I could complain that the ugly people are really damn ugly and the pretty/handsome ones are too much so but overall, I think it's a great show. The cinematic mise en scene of Deadwood is truly awesome: tough, gritty and grueling.

The next thing I'd like to see on Deadwood is a role for Ian Kilminster (AKA Lemmy), it'd be perfect!