As technology rambles on, we see an ever increase in the richness of client-side web-hosted applications. Web applications need to move beyond RIA and into fully fledged applications which are downloaded like a web page but have more and more thick-client-like behaviour such as client-side storage.
Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard this all before but the big question is when is it going to happen and how?
The technology that’ll power this is undoubtedly HTML5.
Looking at the desktop market-share we see that

Firefox – 31.26%
Internet Explorer 8 – 25.23%
Internet Explorer 6 …

Deferred Binding in GWT lets you swap classes at compile time and have GWT generate the result into JavaScript as if you’d coded it that way from the start. Sort of like reflection but at compile time instead of runtime. It’s a bit of nonsense to allow extension of GWT beyond what the native compiler can do.
As a side-note, GWT’s big value add is that it generates JavaScript off of Java. It also does some things during compilation which will speed up the JavaScript it produces de-virtualizing methods and …

Generators allow the GWT coder to generate Java code at compile time and have it then be compiled along with the rest of the project into JavaScript. They are a sort of similar to T4 Templates in the .NET world. I don’t recommend Generators because you end up writing a lot of code in printLn()s which is sort of the opposite of “maintainability”. However, there were so few examples available I decided to post a simple one here just for the sake of it.
My Use Case is I want …

Back around New Years I was looking for a way to simplify creation of cross-browser, DDA accessible HTML. Screens basically. They had to be very rich with lots of bells and whistles and they had to perform. Ideally this system had to be so simple to use that a non-technical person could create XBrowser, DDA compliant screens. I decided to take a second look at ExtJS and it has come a long way since I’d seen it last.
Using ExtJS you can create a screen programmatic-ally using classes and …

I have built many frameworks over the years and I have a love-hate relationship with them. Building frameworks or other types of abstractions such as code generators, template engines and so forth are great creative outlets which tend to distract the over-burdened developer from the primary task at hand which is shipping software. They’re a lot of fun to think about and build and you don’t need to worry about those pesky business requirements. But are they worth the investment?
The first problem with a framework is the requirements. Since …

I interview a lot of candidates for the role of web developer. I thought I would take a minute to describe what I think this role means and the skills *I think* you need to be successful in today’s world. This is just my opinion, your results may vary.
Let’s get core skills out of the way; you need some exposure to the MVC, asp.net code-behind model only just doesn’t cut it. You should understand the rendering pipeline, how to manipulate the HTTP request and so forth. Basic stuff.
You …

I had a weird Serialization problem with Linq to SQL the other day and since I didn’t Google the fix I figured I’d publish it here.
I had a table which refers to itself, something like this:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[node](
[id] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
[title] [nvarchar](50) NOT NULL,
[parentId] [int] NULL,
CONSTRAINT [PK_node] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED
(
[id] ASC
)
ALTER TABLE [dbo].[node]  WITH CHECK ADD  CONSTRAINT [FK_node_node] FOREIGN KEY([parentId])
REFERENCES [dbo].[node] ([id])

I have a stored function to retrieve all the nodes, including their descendants from the DB, mine’s based on the function included here [LINK]
Once I got the rows, …

Moore’s Law states that the level of technology/computing power available doubles every 18-24 months. This exponential growth has held true the last thirty years and shows no signs of slowing down. There is a physical limitation which will be reach but I have no doubt that by that time we will switch from silicon-based transistors to some other means. E.g. Just the other day scientists announced the world’s first molecular transistor consisting of a single molecule of benzene [LINK].
So what’s next? Well if computers get stronger/smaller/faster you might think we’ll …

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology which attempts to classify human “needs” in order of importance ranging from low to high. The lowest needs being the ones most fundamental to life, the highest being the most aspirational or transcendent.
The hierarchy of needs is arranged in a pyramid, once lower level needs are met you can move up to the next level. Lowest on the pyramid are things like Food, Sleep, Water. Here’s a visual:

Self-actualization is highest in the list and presumably by the time you’re operating at …

Steve Chamberlain [LINK] has achieved the ultimate in home-brew electronics: Creating his own CPU from basic logic chips. Absolutely amazing. The photos alone are a thing of beauty but to know this thing actually works is incredible.
From Steve’s site:
“Big Mess o’ Wires 1 is an original CPU design. It does not use any commercial CPU, but instead has a custom CPU constructed from dozens of simple logic chips. Around this foundation is built a full computer with support for a keyboard, sound, video, and external peripherals.
My original goals were:

Build the …