Topic: Software Development

Joel and Jeff discuss the value (or lack thereof) of meta-discussion, how much "big iron" popular websites need, and whether code forking is sometimes inevitable.

Joel and Jeff sit down with Damien Katz to discuss non-conventional databases, non-conventional programming languages, and taking on non-conventional programming projects.

Ruby on Rails has been around for five years and three major versions, and while many small things have changed, the major principles are still the same. In this talk from the 2009 RailsConf, David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Rails, lists some of the things that failed to "kill" Rails, the philosophy and details of the upcoming Rails 3 release, and the key to productivity in software development.

There's growing awareness of the need to publish data online, and to support programmatic access to that data. In this conversation, host Jon Udell talks with Steven Willmott about how his company, 3Scale, helps businesses create and manage application programming interfaces to their data.

Joel and Jeff discuss HTML encoding, designing "safe by default", whether a question can be too simple, and the art of beta testing.

As more individuals have an online presence, developers continue to come up with new ways for people to post items. Sachin Agarwal and Garry Tan discuss Posterous, a rich microblogging platform. They talk about how the service was developed, the architecture of the process, and the security methods in place to protect people. They also review their business model and their product roadmap.

Scott Ruthfield describes Jiffy, a new open source performance measurement tool for measuring true client-side performance of web sites. Ruthfield identifies the components of website performance problems and the decision process that led WhitePages.com to develop their own solution. Jiffy's goals, components, and a sample implementation provide a thorough introduction to the toolkit.

Joel and Jeff discuss the relationship between speed and skill, iPhone development, and the value of programming fundamentals.

If you're looking for a Linux initiative that is truly open source, where you can download the source, contribute without censorship, and drive the project, check out Moblin.org. The Moblin project was conceived in order to drive innovation on the new breed of Internet-enabled mobile devices, to foster community participation, and to avoid locking into a proprietary platform. Dirk Hohndel, the helmsman, woos open source developers to take this platform to its next level by participating in the community.

Today there are tools for testing web applications, but they are difficult to use, costly, and poorly integrated with web browsers. In response to these limitations, Vik Chaudhary and Abelardo Gonzalez of Keynote Systems announce their new web testing product, the Keynote Internet Testing Environment.