This is one of those days where I could write a comment that says:
maybe it's easier to do this at eval time.
We could tag the foreach onto the malkovitch.
This ties into another aspect of language-centric software development that I haven't delved into yet. It is obvious that Joel has very specific meanings for 'eval time', 'tag', 'foreach' and 'malkovitch'. Creating a language when talking about a piece of software is very powerful. Mathematicians do this all the time. When they run into a concept over and over they give it a name. That name makes it easier to remember and moves you up a level of abstraction. So now there are two languages in language-centric software development, the embedded language you wrote as glue to hold the program together, and the extension to english you made to make talking about the program easier. The key to the power of language-centric software development is that you make them the same language.
SOAP in Mozilla
I mentioned on Friday that I couldn't get the JavaScript SOAP interface in Mozilla to work. Here is the code snippet I was missing:
if (!call.verifySourceHeader) {
netscape.security.PrivilegeManager.enablePrivilege("UniversalBrowserRead");
}
Up and running thanks to Google and netscape.public.mozilla.xml.
My in-depth review of Borland C++ Builder 6 continues...
Borland C++ Builder 6 ships with the STLPort version of the Standard Template Libaray. The version they ship is 4.5 and you can download a beta of a later version of STLPort, one that is newer than the one that comes on the CD-ROM. I like their use of open source software. In this case it is a big win for both STLPort and Borland, Borland gets a top of the line STL implementation for free and STLPort gets a larger audience, hopefully enticing more people to contribute bug fixes and enhancements.
There is one little problem with Borlands use of STLPort. Before you download the beta version of STLPort you have to go through a click-through license agreement which reads:
This Software is owned by Borland or its suppliers and is protected by copyright law and international copyright treaty. Therefore, you must treat this Software like any other copyrighted material (e.g., a book), except that you may either make one copy of the Software solely for backup or archival purposes or transfer the Software to a single hard disk provided you keep the original solely for backup or archival purposes.
Which is completely false, STLPort is not owned by Borland. Here is the copyright notice for STLPort:
Copyright (c) 1994 Hewlett-Packard CompanyCopyright (c) 1996,1997 Silicon Graphics Computer Systems, Inc.
Copyright (c) 1997 Moscow Center for SPARC Technology
Copyright (c) 1999 Boris Fomitchev
This material is provided "as is", with absolutely no warranty expressed or implied. Any use is at your own risk.
Permission to use or copy this software for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided the above notices are retained on all copies. Permission to modify the code and to distribute modified code is granted, provided the above notices are retained, and a notice that the code was modified is included with the above copyright notice.
Is this some grand conspiracy by Borland to steal open source software? I doubt it. More than likely this is just boiler-plate legalese they put on all of their downloads. They might want to change it before the Slashdot crowd hears about it though.