You may or may not have noticed the lack of updates recently, and all I can say in my defense is that I’ve been busy. But there’s something else that’s going on: this blog started as a platform for me to publish my ideas about web development in general and JavaScript in particular. Since then, I’ve moved on to other things and do not think about web development quite as much as I used to. This might change again in the future, but for the moment, I’m focused on my thesis project which has to do with the programming language I designed called “zpice”. Because I’d rather not see this blog disappear into nothingness, there’s going to be some changes in the near future. For one, I will finally publish the second part of the article “JavaScript for people who are in slightly less of a hurry” that has been long overdue. After that, this will become strictly a personal blog and I will start a new blog for everything that is zpice-related. As soon as there’s a URL, I’ll let you know how to get to it.

Here's an article I have written about Windows Mobile as an app platform that was recently published on Heise Developer. It is packed with information about the current state of app development on Windows Mobile as well as a short run-down of things to come with Windows Phone 7 Series. If you don't speak German, try this almost readable automatic translation.

• Apptraktiv? Windows Mobile als App-Plattform (German)

...for arbitrary values of stable. Actually it's been a little more than a year since I've first shared JSINQ with the world and so today I feel confident enough to present you with version 1.0. There's quite a lot of new stuff in this release including support for .NET 4.0's new query operator "zip". Zip lets you combine two Enumerables into one, sort of like a join but without the complexity. What's frankly more notable though is the inclusion of two new types, a list type that is a complete implementation of System.Collections.Generic.List and a dictionary type that is (you guessed it) an implementation of System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary. The reason why these were included is because a) JSINQ already had a private dictionary type that it used for certain set operations and b) both the list and the dictionary implementation are enumerables making the framework even more useful. It's also worth mentioning that JavaScript's expando objects which are commonly (ab-)used as dictionaries only support primitive types as keys. JSINQ's dictionary implementation on the other hand (like its .NET counterpart) supports both primitive types and complex types out of the box. If you're interested in how this works, go check out the source code.

Just like the previous release, JSINQ 1.0 comes with a comprehensive suite of tests which is in part to blame for why this release took so long to complete. Nonetheless, I'm still a strong supporter of this approach (writing unit tests in general, not TDD which I don't practice), not just because it helps to find bugs - something that is invaluable when programming in a weakly typed language with whacky semantics, but also because it takes a lot of the uncertainty out of when you have to change something.

So there you have it. Grab your copy of JSINQ today and let me know what you think. Oh, and should you come across any bugs, let me know. Gotta catch 'em all.

• Get JSINQ 1.0
• Play with it online!

My last article JavaScript for people who are in a hurry was yet another attempt to share my appreciation for this language with the world. JavaScript isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a much nicer language than most people give it credit for. Also, cross-browser issues aside, JavaScript is great fun to program in. The problem [...]
read the full article

Sweet mother of science, have I really not posted anything in over three months? Well, fear not because here's a brand new article for all of you out there who wish they knew JavaScript, but can't be arsed to really dive into it. If you can be arsed to dive into it, go ahead and buy my book. It has [...]
read the full article