Friday, May 02, 2003

Ever wanted to flush all those MS products? Well now you can! 4:51:27 PM Sit and surf: MSN UK tests portable potty. The iLoo will come complete with a PC, broadband Internet access and vacuum-suctioned plumbing--for use at summer festivals or concerts. [CNET News.com] Good lord, this can't be for real.  It's May 2nd, not April 1st!

Liquid / Solid Typing Systems 11:02:42 AM Uncle Bob Martin writes about dynamic vs. statically typed languages, and makes an interesting case for the current trend towards test-oriented development providing the same sorts of consistency checks in a dynamic environment (Python, Ruby) that the compiler might help you ferret out in a static one (Java, C++).  I think there are some crossovers here into the XML realm, in a couple of ways.  Schema can provide a "hybrid" static/dynamic structure which both validates nicely to confirm core stuff works and allows unexpected extensibility-oriented content - maybe that's the best of both worlds with respect to markup?  Also, you could consider schema'ed docs in general to be statically typed, and instances-with-no-schemas to be "dynamic", interpreted as you please - as XML to XPath/XQuery/XSLT, as "just data" to your favorite XML<->programming language binding.

© Copyright 2003 Glen Daniels.