Bitwise Magazine

Turbo Pascal - Quarter of a Century Later

25 Glorious Years!

Wednesday 19 November 2008

CodeGear’s David Intersimone wrote to me today to remind me of a very important anniversary - 25 years since Turbo Pascal 1.0 shipped!

If that had never happened, I wonder what I'd be doing now? Probably not publishing Bitwise and running a software company. Turbo Pascal really did change the course of my life. I can't claim that I started using it right after it was released. At that time, I wouldn't have known one end of a computer from the other. I was reasonably fresh out of University (my subject was English) and busily carving out a career as a pop music journalist. Each day I would tackle challenging tasks such as discovering Simon Le Bon's favourite breakfast cereal or Boy George's favourite brand of underpants. That was a lot of fun - for a while - but I couldn't really see myself spending the next twenty-five years doing it... Then I interviewed the cross-dressing disco diva, Divine (as explained (...)

more...

Ruby Rage

Why, I wonder, does Ruby provoke such high passion?

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Some people get almost patriotically attached to their favourite programming languages. All I can say is: I don’t. My relative detachment sometimes causes offence - when, for example, I mention something I don’t like in a language or think is done better in some other language, some people seem to take it as a personal attack, akin to an act of sabotage or betrayal.

This is especially true of Ruby. Look, I like Ruby, I spend hours of most days programming in Ruby, heck! I run a company that develops a Ruby programming IDE called Ruby In Steel. Still not persuaded? OK, then, I've written Ruby programming columns in PC Pro magazine, I've published a free eBook on Ruby called The Little Book Of Ruby and I am now writing a much bigger eBook called The Book Of Ruby (260 plus pages and growing). I mean, you know, how can I put this - I am not an enemy of Ruby! But, from time to time, I confess that I have mentioned that there are certain things about Ruby that I don't much like or which, in my opinion, could be improved upon. Last year Bitwise also printed a critical discussion of Ruby by computer science academic, Matthew Huntbach, (who was given (...)

more...

Fireworks CS4 Review

Adobe’s Web Graphics Tool Gets a Makeover

Thursday 13 November 2008

Adobe recently released new versions of most of its major software products including Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks. We’ll be taking a look at some of these over the weeks ahead - starting with Fireworks...

Fireworks CS4 Fireworks is Adobe's image editing application for web designers. While many of its features duplicate those in Adobe's Photoshop, there are significant differences between the two applications. Photoshop is principally aimed at high resolution image editing - for example, by professional photographers or artists targeting printed media such as books and magazines. Fireworks is optimised for web design. Accordingly, while it doesn't have the full range of image manipulation tools provided by Photoshop, it does make light work of common web design tasks such as creating rollover buttons, slicing up large graphics and putting them into seamless HTML tables. Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4) Editions Fireworks can be bought as a standalone product ($299 / £235) and it is also (...)

more...

Breaking News - Komodo IDE 5.0

Tuesday 28 October 2008

I’ve just heard that ActiveState is about to announce the release date of the next version of its multi-language Komodo IDE. The official announcement of Komodo IDE version 5.0 will be made tomorrow (October 29th) but, always eager to get a scoop, we can give you some advance info now.

Komodo IDE 5.0 is centred around team development features: more SCC support options and a smart cross-SCC system checkout tool, formatting tools to keep code consistent and readable across teams, and team pricing. There are also UI improvements and bug fixes. The new release uses the Mozilla 1.9 codebase (the same codebase as Firefox 3) and Python 2.6, and ActiveState says that it's “faster, prettier, and more stable”. For a limited time, ActiveState will offer a single licence Komodo IDE for $245 (regular price will be $295) with an offer on 5-packs for $995, (a saving of nearly $500 off the regular price, $1475). Komodo IDE 5.0 will be released on November 4th. For more information (following the official announcement) visit: (...)

more...

Delphi Prism - Visual Studio Pascal For .NET

Delphi through the looking glass?

Monday 27 October 2008

On October 27th, 2008, CodeGear launches a new version of its flagship product, Delphi - for the first time ever hosted inside Microsoft’s Visual Studio. Or is it really the first time? In fact, it turns out that this new product, called Delphi Prism bears more than a superficial resemblance to another product called Oxygene or (to use its previous name), Chrome. The Oxygene/Chrome language and development environment was first launched in 2005 by RemObjects Software. We’ve written about it previously in Bitwise and also discussed it with its Chief Architect, marc hoffman. So how come Oxygene has become transformed into Delphi Prism? And what impact will it have on Delphi programmers, Oxygene programmers or any other programmers, come to that? We decided to get the lowdown on Delphi Prism here in another exclusive interview with RemObjects CEO, marc hoffman.

bitwise: What are the principal language differences between ‘traditional' Delphi and Delphi Prism? mh: I think there's two principal categories here: (a) language "differences" as in features that are actually present in Delphi and Prism but work or look slightly different and (b) "differences" as in features that are not supported by one or the other. In general the structure and syntax of the languages is pretty similar, so Delphi developers will feel right at home in Prism, and the vast majority of Delphi-style code will "just work" in Prism, as well. There are a few subtle syntax differences where Prism decided to go a different route than Delphi, either for aesthetic reasons or dictated by the platform. For example Prism uses := to define default parameters for methods (...)

more...

Screen Recording Tools: BB FlashBack and ALLCapture

Review: screencasting

Monday 20 October 2008

If you want to create animated software tutorials or product demos, you will need some kind of screen recording and editing tool. Here we look at two contenders, Blueberry Software’s BB FlashBack and Balesio’s ALLCapture...

Over the past few of years, Blueberry Software's BB FlashBack screen recorder has come on in leaps and bounds. When I first reviewed it, back in July 2005, I found it to be a simple tool that was good value for money but lacking in features. The latest version is still easy to use and it significantly adds to the features: it includes a ‘picture in picture' capability to let you include webcam videos right inside your screen recordings while the editor has a multi-track sound editor to let you mix voice, music and effects tracks easily. The limitations which I noted in previous releases (in particular the inability to record from multiple screens) have been fixed. ALLCapture is new to me. Even though it is now on version 3.0, prior to writing this review I had never used it. (...)

more...

ActionScript 1 - Associative Arrays

Or how to make a Hash of an Object

Monday 13 October 2008

In this new series, I’ll be taking a look at some of the fundamental features of ActionScript programming. In part one, I’ll try to find out why the root class of the ActionScript class hierarchy is a Hash...

You can download a 60-day trial of Flex Builder from: http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/ You can find all the code in this article ‘ready to run' in the download code archive, as1.zip. If you are using Adobe Flex Builder 3, you can open this project without unzipping the archive first: do this by selecting File/Import/Flex Project. With ‘Archive file' selected, click Browse and locate the zip archive. Select Open. Then click Finish. If you are using some other editor or IDE you may need to open the zip file before importing the project. To run a project, select an mxml file in the Flex Navigator and click an item on the Run menu. Key Objectives In ActionScript, the basic class from which all other classes are derived is called Object - and it is very similar to what some (...)

more...

Delphi For Visual Studio

They Said They Wouldn’t Now They Say They Will!

Monday 6 October 2008

Apparently, CodeGear (the company that used to be Borland before splitting off any being bought up by Embarcadero) has said that they will launch a version of Delphi (Pascal) to be hosted in Visual Studio.

This is odd, since previously, when Le Monde Informatique reported that CodeGear were planning a Delphi for Visual Studio and I translated bits of that report here on Bitwise, the Delphi product manager, Nick Hodges posted a comment to my article stating: “The French article is totally false. We have no such plans.” The Editor of Le Monde Informatique at the time, stood by his journalist but CodeGear were insistent, saying that they denied “any intention of using the Visual Studio platform”. Nick Hodges, meanwhile, waxed lyrical on the subject (his original blog entry is no longer online but I still have some quotes from it and you can find the original archived by the Wayback Machine): “We are not even contemplating such a thing. We aren't doing it. (...)

more...

Free Ruby In Steel IDE includes free Visual Studio!

Freer than Beer!

Monday 6 October 2008

My company has just released a free version of our Ruby On Rails IDE which includes an (optional) Ruby-flavoured version of Visual Studio 2008. I did mention that it’s free, didn’t I...?

Anyhow, here's the press release: Ruby In Steel - New Free Edition includes free copy of Visual Studio SapphireSteel Software today released a free edition of Ruby In Steel, the Ruby and Rails IDE for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. Ruby In Steel Personal Edition (PE) 2008 provides all the tools needed to develop and maintain Ruby or Ruby On Rails projects including syntax sensitive customizable code coloring and code folding, coding tools such as auto-indenting, code reformatting, bracket and keyword matching and integrated consoles to allow users to interact with the Ruby interpreter in docked or floating windows. Ruby In Steel PE 2008 even includes a free copy of Visual Studio 2008! Ruby In Steel PE 2008 is available for personal or commercial development. It does not require (...)

more...

Adobe CS4 Web Tools - Preview

First Look at Dreamweaver, Fireworks et al

Sunday 5 October 2008

Adobe will be releasing a whole batch of updated products in Creative Suite 4 later this month. This will include (among other things) new versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, the Flash IDE, Premiere Pro, Dreamweaver and Fireworks.

Dreamweaver CS4 - spiffed up, but not too much...

The applications promise better integration to enable content to be moved between - for example - Photoshop and Flash or from Dreamweaver to Fireworks. Both Photoshop and the Flash IDE have been enhanced for simpler operations on 3D objects and Adobe's InDesign DTP program adds features such as ‘conditional text' to support the creation of multi-version documents (e.g. multi-lingual or teacher/student versions) as well as the ability to export layouts to Flash. I get the feeling that Flash is increasingly defining the future face of Adobe products. It wasn't so long ago that Flash (the ubiquitous streaming graphics technology) didn't even belong to Adobe. Along with the web design IDE Dreamweaver, and the Web graphics software Fireworks, Flash was developed by a rival company, (...)

more...

Introduction To ActionScript

The language behind Flex, Flash and AIR

Tuesday 30 September 2008

For years, I had assumed that ActionScript was a language that occupied a small and not very interesting programming niche. It was the scripting language of Macromedia/Adobe Flash graphics. It was, in short, the thing responsible for making all those irritating animated advertisements fly around over web pages when I’m trying to read them.

Now my view of ActionScript has changed - radically. ActionScript is no longer merely a language for ‘scripting' animated graphics - it is a powerful general-purpose programming language. In fact, I'd say that ActionScript is now one of the most important programming languages around. Just look at what it gives you: it is an object-oriented language with a full range of visual controls for designing user interfaces; it can be integrated with ‘back end' technologies using other languages and frameworks such as PHP, ASP and Ruby On Rails (see ‘Ruby On Rails With Flex); it comes with a huge and powerful class library (Flex) for developing online, browser-hosted applications or (using the AIR runtime) standalone desktop applications; it has (of course!) excellent (...)

more...

Free Ruby Programming eBooks

Ten chapters down, ten to go...

Friday 26 September 2008

Yes, I do have a life beyond Bitwise, honest! Most of it is taken up with my company, SapphireSteel Software.

Not only am I involved in the design and programming of ‘Ruby In Steel' our Ruby On Rails IDE but also in a number of other interesting little projects such as a new programming language called Sapphire for Microsoft's Dynamic language Runtime on .NET and a completely new product called Amethyst which we'll be launching early in 2009. And then there is The Book Of Ruby. This started out, some years ago, as a learning project: I was learning Ruby and so I decided to write hundreds of little Ruby programs to help me dig into all the obscure little corners of the language. Having written those programs, I decided to write a little eBook, The Little Book Of Ruby to help other people get to grips with the basics of Ruby. But soon I realised that the ‘Little Book' still only (...)

more...

Blow Up 2

Image Processing - one size fits all?

Monday 22 September 2008

Blow Up 2
$249 ($99 upgrade)
http://www.alienskin.com

This shows the Blow Up 2 user interface with the lists of presets on the left and the previewed image on the right.

It's commonplace in movies to see the FBI agent zoom in on a photograph on his computer screen and enlarge some tiny detail to reveal the killer's face in enormous clarity. Of course, that's not the way that computers work in real life. The more you enlarge an image, the worse the resolution becomes. Instead of seeing the killer's face, what you really see is a mass of fuzzy squares representing the enlarged pixels from the original image. Or then again, maybe not. Alien Skin's Blow Up 2 is an image processing plug-in for Photoshop that resizes images without the degradation in quality that you might normally expect. No, it doesn't live up to the fantasy ‘movie version' of image processing but it does, nevertheless, make it easy to resize or crop images and optimize them for (...)

more...

Adobe AIR in Action

Book Review

Wednesday 17 September 2008

Adobe AIR in Action
$39.99 / £28.99
by Joey Lott, Kathryn Rotondo, Sam Ahn and Ashley Atkins
Manning: http://manning.com/lott/
Computer Bookshops: http://www.compman.co.uk/
344 pages
ISBN: 1933988487

Adobe's AIR is the name of a runtime environment for creating desktop applications using an extended version of the Flex framework combined with Flash graphics to define the user interface. ‘Adobe AIR In Action' is aimed at helping Flex and Flash developers to learn to program AIR applications. It is not aimed at complete newcomers to Flex and, at the very least, a basic understanding of the ActionScript programming language is assumed. In eight chapters, the book concentrates on the special features of AIR - those things which set it apart from traditional browser-based Flex applications. It starts off with the fundamentals of creating, authenticating, building and running AIR applications. It then moves on to discuss specific topics including windows and menus, file system (...)

more...

Are New Programming Languages Bad?

Something old, something new...

Monday 15 September 2008

Creating a new language is fascinating, exhilarating, infuriating and frustrating. But sometimes you end up feeling as though it makes you one of the bad guys...

Ever since my company, SapphireSteel Software, announced that we had begun work on a language called Sapphire (which we are developing for the Dynamic Language Runtime on .NET), we have noticed that a sizable number of people feel that what we are doing must be either a) bad, b) misguided, c) unnecessary, d) doomed to failure or e) all of the above. OK, so maybe they are right and maybe we'll live to rue the day we ever embarked on this project. But, frankly, that's our problem - we are the people putting all the time and effort into Sapphire. If that time and effort is wasted, it's our loss, not anyone else's. So I admit to finding it a little bit odd that some people feel such antipathy to the project. Here is a small sample of some of the reactions we've had: (1) “No new (...)

more...

Design patterns : elements of reusable object-oriented software

Book Review

Saturday 13 September 2008

Design patterns : elements of reusable object-oriented software
$59.99 / £41.99
by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides
Hardcover: 416 pages
Addison Wesley
http://www.awprofessional.com
http://www.compman.co.uk/
ISBN-10: 0201633612
ISBN-13: 978-0201633610

This is not a new book - it was first published in 1994 - but it is an important and an influential book, one that has stood the test of time (it is now on its 36th printing) and is regarded by many people as one of the rather small number of ‘classic' computer texts. If you are unfamiliar with this book, the first thing you may want to know is just what the heck a ‘design pattern' is anyway? The simple answer is that it is some general ‘way of doing things' - a recipe for creating a certain type of program or solving a specific type of problem. This book contains many such patterns, each of which is given a descriptive name such as the ‘Visitor' pattern or the ‘Facade' pattern. Each pattern is described in its own section, starting with a brief summary (...)

more...

Ruby In Steel 1.3 Released

Whew...!

Wednesday 3 September 2008

Software releases are incredibly exhausting.

Getting everything ready involves not only writing the software but testing it, documenting it, updating the help system, updating the web site and a few dozen other time-consuming tasks... which may help to explain why I'm so tired and bleary-eyed today. Anyway, just in case Ruby and/or Rails development is of interest to you, this is just a quick note to say that the latest version of the Ruby In Steel IDE for Visual Studio was released today. More info here: http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Ruby-In-Steel-1-3-Released And now, I think I'm just going to grab a cup of tea, unplug the telephone and settle down in front of the fire with the dog, the cat and a good (...)

more...

DLR - Build Your Own Language (part 3)

Assignment statements

Monday 1 September 2008

Dermot Hogan looks at what’s required to build your very own computer language using two new – and remarkable – tools. Microsoft’s Dynamic Language Runtime and ANTLR3 by Terrence Parr from the University of San Francisco.

Download The Source Code See also: Part One - The Basics Part Two - The Grammar Updating to Antlr 3.1 and the latest DLR In our simple calculator so far, we've been able to evaluate expressions like 1+2/3 or (1+2)/3 - but not much else. But even the simplest calculators have a 'memory' function that allows you to store and retrieve one result of a calculation. This month, we'' generalize this memory facility by the means of the more general 'assignment statement'. In most (if not all) programming languages, an assignment statement is one of the most fundamental concepts. When in C# or Java or Visual Basic, we say x = 1 we are using a shorthand for a complex sequence of smaller, simpler instructions. And when you get down to the microcode, it can be a very complex sequence (...)

more...

Learn Ruby For Free

So what’s the big deal with Ruby anyhow?

Tuesday 26 August 2008

The Ruby language has generated a heck of a lot of discussion on the Web over the past couple of years. Even so, the plain fact of the matter is that more people have heard of Ruby than have actually programmed in it.

In my view, Ruby has suffered from its own pre-publicity. Ruby enthusiasts often get so excited about the language that they can't help overstating its virtues. One of the features that has definitely been overstated is Ruby's simplicity. On the one hand it is certainly true that you can write Ruby programs in a fraction of the number of lines that you might use in many other languages. But - and here's the catch - Ruby is not really a ‘simple' language at all. It is, on the contrary, a very complex language. It has a huge number of programming constructs and the differences between them can be subtle and confusing (there are different precedences for two sets of apparently similar Boolean operators, for instance, and different precedences for two syntaxes of block delimiters), (...)

more...

Ad-Aware 2008

Anti-virus/advertising/malware software

Monday 25 August 2008

Ad-Aware is a good all-in-one disk cleanup tool - but with an annoying licence.

If your computer is connected to the Internet you can never be sure what nasty little visitors are surreptitiously downloading themselves on your hard disk.

Personally, I take security pretty seriously. I have a firewall in place and I also have anti-virus software (from Sophos) installed. When my browser warns me that it thinks the site I am about to visit may be dodgy, I take its advice and go somewhere else instead. Even so, when I tried out the latest version of Lavasoft's Ad-Aware, I discovered that several thousand little unauthorized visitors had downloaded themselves onto my hard disk. As it happens, none of these posed a serious threat (it's always good to know that my security measures seem to be working!). They were ‘tracking cookies' - small files that store some status information about my browsing activities. Some of these, such as the cookies from blogs of various newspapers, I take to be harmless. The largest number (...)

more...

More..

... | 180 | 200 | 220 | 240 | 260 | 280 | 300 | 320 | 340 |...