Django

Congratulations to the Django project!

A logic reason for use indentation instead of brakes or keywords.

Python does not allow to obfuscate the structure of a program by using bogus indentations

Tabs or Spaces?

It can be a good idea to avoid tabs altogether, because the semantics of tabs are not very well-defined in the computer world, and they can be displayed completely differently on different types of systems and editors.

This is a difference between Java and python; and just for finish my post, I’d like to share one problem that I had a few time ago. I started reading some Java code from someone who left the place where I was working and I found something like this:

if(x==3)
  x++;
  {
  System.out.println(x);
  }

The first time I read the code, I din’t get why always the x variable was being print. That is why I now I use checkstyle libraries for my java IDEs. Anyway, I really like programming in python and it’s nice to have more reasons for using the right indentation.

No! I couldn’t go! Where?? The future of Webapps conferences and workshops in Miami. I would love to visit Miami some day, I haven’t been there(yet). I think this was a great opportunity, but there are a lot of things that require my attention in Valencia right now. Anyway, I have found very interesting that the audio and the slides are available for downloading here. I have just heard two or three conferences, but I’m planning on put more attention on almost all. Here are the notes about what I have listened.

Kevin Marks from Google
He spoke about the Open Social API and how the email has been replaced by other ways of communication, like the instant messaging, the blogs, and of course the social networks. I like his conference because he explains in an ordered way how is evolving the communication process between people. I haven’t tried the Open Social API, but I for what I have heard in the conference and I’m interested in knowing how it works, and I will compare it with the Facebook API and with others available. In the Q&A section someone asked about the dark side of Social Networks, because there is one. Because we can’t lie about the party that we said we didn’t go, but we did go, if we public photos in Flick or Facebook about this party we may be caught in our lie. This has happened a lot in Facebook, and I believe this is part of the future. We are going to be more honest in the future. Maybe not more honest with our friends, parents or our boss, but we will be more honest with ourself.

Kevin said something else that I have thought but I haven’t been able to explain. He mention something about two kind of social networks: public and private.  I think those networks could be like this:

• The public were we show the things that we want anybody in the world may see about us, but it is not really what we are, it is more like the shiny cover of and old book.
• The private where we all are connected by our important and private information but we don’t share our valuable information, we just share the connection (more like connexions than friends). In this way we share the index and the table of content from our not so shiny book.
  

And maybe there is room for another kind of network, one even more close and personal.  One social network where we really share valuable information and true friendship.  I think this kind of network may have only a few contacts (10 or something like that),  where we could be more honest and share information without being worried about who reads, sees, or comments our dirty laundry.  I know that by having restricted and small networks the concept of social networking does not work very well, but since the value of a network is defined by two main factors: the number of elements integrating the network and the value of the information that share the elements of the network, I believe this close and small private networks will successfully provide a private life and give us the chance to be a little bit more hones with the people we trust.

I have really enjoyed listening this conference, and I’m try¡ng to listen a few more (instead of the punk-rock music I usually have in my mind),  so If I get anything inspiring to share in my mind I’ll be posting soon.

The old Yahoo!

In the beginning of the World Wide Web, there was a company born just to organize and categorize other sites in the same World Wide Web. This company brought innovation, organization and made available information lost in the unknown dark places of the Web. We felt happy. We liked Yahoo! And Yahoo! felt the same way about us. They liked us. The company grow, and the problems also start growing. And there was the dot com crash, but not before Yahoo! were known as one of the most respectable an important companies in the Web.

Today’s Yahoo!

Yahoo! survived the crash, and they became a better company. They bring innovation again. They found innovation in other new companies. They got del.icio.us, flickr, Zimbra and many others. They also did a great job in their own, for example: new features for the famous Yahoo! Mail, a great portal design and an incredible news and financial sites. Yahoo! is now on the top of the Internet. But they also made some mistakes, they didn’t realize about all the potential of some new companies. It was impossible to know a few years ago that Google will become what it is today. But, if Yahoo! hadn’t let go Google maybe today we wouldn’t have AJAX maps, or android, or something like Gmail or Yahoo! Mail with chat. It has been competition what it is improving the new technologies around the Internet for last three or four years. And for that, maybe what Yahoo! did wasn’t a mistake (for the Internet), because they let Google, Facebook and others change the Internet in ways that just one company wouldn’t be able to imagine.

The new Yahoo!

I don’t now what will happen with Yahoo! and Microsoft. I wish Yahoo! could stay by itself for a long long time. I wish they could keep doing creative stuff for a long time. But, there is a lot of money on the table, and there are a lot of doubts inside Yahoo! Maybe the only way that they could survive the bid is if they had some killer Web Application or some new and creative business. However, if they don’t believe in their projects or just don’t have a really cool one, they will let all the “not so cool” new projects be part of Microsoft. Probably there is one or two great things that are cooking inside Yahoo! that may shake the Internet and probably we won’t see or hear anything about those projects before this thing with Microsoft it’s over. I would like to see Yahoo! helping start-up companies an becoming so much powerful in the next years. I would like to see a Yahoo! supporting more Open Source projects. I would like to see Yahoo! working with Google and Microsoft but being three different companies. I would like to see Yahoo! in the next Web generation. Yahoo! deserve it.

It is just, that the blue works better for me.