A client relying on a 3rd party service which we had been assured was available received an email today that said "[The service] is in a stop sell mode at this time as we are evaluating etc."

I'm going to have to remember that the next time I approach a …

TeX and METAFONT have version numbers that asymptotically approach ? and e. This reflects Don Knuth's decision that it's more important to create consistency with those tools than to add features. I've thought about something similar with programming language design: languages like Java and C# were very "teachable" in their …

The new spinoff from Borland, CodeGear, is strongly hinting that they will produce at least one dynamic language:

CEO Ben Smith: "We're also working on plans that can help developers take advantage of growing and emerging areas like web services, Ruby, Python and Ajax. "

David I: "We are not limited …

In comments, Sun's Charles Nutter hints that JRuby may ship by the end of year. Or he may be taking a swipe at the Perl 6 guys: you decide. Ruby on at least one of the two major managed platforms: huge for Ruby. (In that post, I caution that it …

Borland's Developer Tools Group, including the Delphi, C++, C#, and JBuilder tools and the Interbase database tools, have been spun off into a new company called CodeGear to be headed by Ben Smith (Byte's old tech editor?). Contrary to all previous reports, CodeGear will be a wholly owned subsidiary, not …

Dr. Dobb's Journal has taken over the Jolt Awards now that Software Development is no more. Once again I'll be judging and, actually, serving as Moderator of the Development Environments and Languages category.

Given that we considered VS2005 last year (but, hey!, XNA) and given that Callisto is certainly going …

I don't have an HDTV and I don't think I'm going to buy one in the foreseeable future. I watch TV every evening for a couple of hours. I like TV fine.

I have analog basic cable that requires no set-top box and for which I pay around \\(40 a …

Bill de h?ra's post on the language's he's used in the past year contains the provocative thought "...some people are looking at things like HTTP and Ant and CSS and wondering whether they are really programming languages....[T]hey are either replacing or reducing the raw coding I used …

Tim Bray compares Frameworks (Source: Still done seeking). I largely agree with Tim Bray's analysis, particularly the point that all major web frameworks will scale sufficiently and that, in the long run, maintainability is likely to be the most important factor in the attractiveness of a framework.

By that token …

Off Tonga, a volcanic island has emerged from the depths. How cool must that be to see?