Buildr on JRuby. For a while it looked like Buildr managed to hit every JRuby bug and then some. Most tests would fail, and that would only happen on days JRuby actually managed to load Buildr and its dependencies. Well, that’s history now.
Thanks to Victor Hugo Borja, we got Buildr running on JRuby 1.1RC. All tests are green. Along the way we found three incompatibilities with MRI, all noted, recorded and monkey patched around. At least until 1.1 final comes out.
Beside the fact that it actually works, 1.1 feels way faster and much more polished. Way to go.
Accessible charts. Chris Heilmann describes an interesting technique for creating accessible charts using Google Charts. It’s a simple matter of using tables for the data, so screen readers can take advantage of it, and converting the tables to graphs for the visually enhanced user agents. Brilliant. (Via Ajaxian)
The easy FUD. Ryan Tomayko on the easy-fabreezy-web-services FUD:
I’ve never heard anyone from the REST camp claim that building distributed systems was “easy”. Ever. It’s exactly what has separated the two camps, in my opinion. There’s a clear distinction in overarching goals. The WS-* folks have historically been obsessed with making things easy, usually for an imaginary business analyst who is nowhere near as technically adept as they. The REST folks, on the other hand, seem much more interested in keeping the entire stack simple, and for everyone involved.
In my personal experience, WS-* has always been easy, for some value of “services”, but stretch it a bit and the beast turns unmanageable. REST doesn’t start easy, but keeps thing simpler for much longer. And in the end, simpler servers better.
30,000 and counting. It’s not too late to save XP. InfoWorld is running an online petition to keep the better Windows around for longer.
Now, I want an iPhone. New Gmail for iPhone.
Charles Oliver Nutter