lesscode.org

I’m not sure if I blacked out again and missed a couple of days there or if I’m just not paying attention but David Hansson, of all people, pointed me to Django today and I have to say I was impressed when I got there. Django is a web framework in Python that looks to have a lot of the same traits as Rails (is it okay to say that out loud?). That is, full stack, DRY, documentation, etc. — I’m sure we’re all familiar with the ingredients at this point.

Further, it seems to have the support of Simon Willison, who is not only British but also an extremely smart and pragmatic guy whose opinion I respect a great deal (so much so that I recently invited him to post here anytime he wanted). If I remember correctly, Simon did a stint over in Lawrence, KS a few years back and whatdoyaknow, this framework fuels lawrence.com as well as chicagocrime.org, which is one of the more interesting twists on social/awareness software I’ve seen. I’m not sure if Simon had a hand in all this but I do remember him speaking highly of his colleagues in Lawrence.

I haven’t had a chance to pull anything down and take a look just yet but it’s the first thing on my list. Also, it looks like they haven’t quite launched yet so go easy on them.

Tim Bray posted a doozy a few minutes ago on the changing face of PR, analysis, and trade press:

The Old Public Relations

The mechanism was easy to write down, it went like this:

1. Senior management, with a lot of input from marketing people, would work out a company’s message and talking points.

2. Internal marketing people, working with PR consultants, would try to burn the message into the retinas of the trade press and analysts.

3. The journalists and analysts would do what they do: the whorish segment of the profession regurgitating the company messages to the attention of very few, the independent thinkers producing sometimes-useful analysis of what the companies were really up to.

It never worked that well; to start with, it was expensive and slow. Also, there was a huge conflict of interest: the journalists and analysts, who positioned themselves as independents, were in fact mostly on the payroll of the companies trying to push the messages.

The New Public Relations

The new PR pipeline is a lot shorter, simpler, and wider:

1. Senior management works out a company’s goals and messages.

2. Management works hard to make sure that the employees understand them.

3. The people who are really doing the work tell the story to the world, directly.

It’s important to realize that this change in authority is partially responsible for the rise of LAMP/friends as a viable platform for building real applications. That is to say, these technologies have always been a capable platform but the change in how people receive and participate in information has allowed these technologies to step up and finally begin claiming the problem areas they fill so well.

Our biggest problem is that we don’t talk loud enough.

As an example, would 37signals have been possible even two years ago? I really don’t think so; at least, not in its current form. As much as I love the technical and methodological stuff those guys are pushing out, what I think is most interesting is how well they understand The New Public Relations.

While we’re talking about books, O’Reilly’s top 25 is interesting. I’m reproducing it here so as to preserve it in time:

1. Mac OS X Tiger Pocket Guide
2. Linux Pocket Guide
3. Head First Design Patterns
4. Head First Java
5. Dreamweaver MX 2004: The Missing Manual
6. Photoshop Elements 3: The Missing Manual
7. Knoppix Hacks
8. iMovie HD & iDVD 5: The Missing Manual
9. Adobe Photoshop CS One-on-One
10. Mac OS X Tiger for Unix Geeks
11. SQL Pocket Guide
12. iPhoto 5: The Missing Manual
13. iPod and iTunes: The Missing Manual
14. Learning Perl
15. CSS Pocket Reference
16. Learning Unix for Mac OS X Tiger
17. Learning Python
18. JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
19. MAKE: Technology on Your Time Volume 02
20. Learning Java
21. The Art of Project Management
22. Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide
23. Windows XP Hacks
24. Classic Shell Scripting
25. Programming Perl

Okay, so, we can all agree that selling OS X manuals is a good idea. But take those away along with the design related books and what do you get:

1. Linux Pocket Guide
2. Head First Design Patterns
3. Head First Java
4. SQL Pocket Guide
5. Learning Perl
6. CSS Pocket Reference (I’m leaving this in because CSS is a developer’s friend too and most Java people still use table based design. :)
7. Learning Python
8. JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
9. Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide
10. Classic Shell Scripting
11. Programming Perl

While Java has two books on top, the rest of the list shows that there’s no lack of support for LAMPish technologies and the new set of Rails books are likely to break through onto this list as well. So why doesn’t the analyst coverage break down similarly? Why aren’t popular magazines and online publications dedicating half of their content to this stuff?

And just for fun, let’s add the design related titles back in. How many design people do you know that are working primarily in JSP or ASP when they don’t absolutely have to? My experience is that designers stay as far away from the mess that is the current state of mainstream software development as possible. It’s not because they don’t understand as many developers like to assume, it’s because it’s a complete mess.

Attention software industry tool vendors, publications, and analyst groups: you’re not paying attention to your developers. Please shift your attention to the tools we’ve built and join us in doing something useful.

So I had funny idea but I don’t have the skill to make it happen. I’d really like to see a comic strip style image or even a comic strip style web page (ahhh, CSS for comics) containing four slides with the following captions:

1. First they ignore you…
2. Then they laugh at you…
3. Then they fight you…
4. Then you win.

I have no idea what the imagery should look like on each of these but I think we need a big red arrow labelled You are here next to either #1 or #2. :)

I’ll give someone a dollar if they can put that together and post it somewhere. Seriously.

(Oh yea, that’s a quote from M.K. Gandhi)

I ride the industry analysis firms and print publications pretty hard about the lack of playing time given to dynamic languages and simple technologies. It is perhaps more constructive to praise the ones that have shown an honest interest in these technologies. Here’s a partial list:

• O’Reilly ONLamp is the only regular publication (online or off) that I am aware of that is dedicated to increasing awareness of LAMP and friends.

• O’Reilly has also published consistently great books on dynamic languages, Apache, Linux, BSD, etc.

• Dr. Dobb’s Journal sponsors the weekly Python URL, which is performed by actual real members of the Python community (Simon Brunning and Cameron Laird). I’m not sure but I don’t believe this makes it into their print publication.

• IBM developerWorks has published a significant number of Perl, Python, and Ruby related material. Although, I personally dislike the tone of most of these articles as they sometimes suggest that these languages are just for kiddie stuff. David Mertz’s Charming Python column is really very good.

I’m sure there has to be more out there. What are they?

Also, in case you weren’t aware, computer books and print publications aren’t doing very well. Next time your at the bookstore or browsing around on Amazon, consider picking up that O’Reilly Python book you’ve been meaning to buy for a year now, or maybe one of the new books on Rails.