Pythoneer

I was looking for a nice GUI for Mercurial (and there are some), which I basically want for seeing nicer diffs. After searching a while I did come across something. In the Mercurial wiki I then found Using FileMerge.app/opendiff as the diff program (OS X). Pooh that is much better now :-).

Commiting more often
During the couple hours I was using Mercurial without having a nice diff tool I realized, that the “merge often” strategy also helps a little here. And if I understodd this right, that is the usual way when working with a distributed version control system, which also implies why they have to be faster in doing their operations.
If you just commit much sooner, say after you have finished a bigger train of thought (the drcs-way, if I got that right), instead of after having the entire task done (my usual svn way), then you also don’t need the diff tool that often. I am still used to diffing before every commit and just making sure I left no debug stuff in there and simply to be confident about the checkin. May be this is a bit old-fashioned and I should just really double-check by inspecting the diffs thouroughly when the before mentioned big task is done and I want to push it back to the incoming repositiory or distribute it in some other way.

My way to the distributed version control systems
After having ignored the distributed version control systems for a while I finally started using them, when the number of parallel patches and changes just overwhelmed me. And I realized it to be especially helpful when the revision control system that the client is using is not reachable over the web, just via intranet and you still have to work in some other place and want to checkin at times.
Actually I was interested in this stuff already for a while and first heard about it from Jan in 2006 (he suggested svk, by then I completely rejected the idea, because I didn’t see the necessity I guess) and some time later I got reminded of it again when I saw the much talked about video from Linus Torvald’s talk about git (which in some parts I find a bit too bold).
And finally today when I was listening to Scott Hanselman’s excellent show (excellent as usual, great job Scott, you are so enduring and have always interesting shows, keep it up) Distributed Source Control with Git all barriers finally came down and I have fully fallen for it.

Welcome to the real world …

I have just seen that there are some nice things to get tackled in the summer of code, I am really looking forward to the results of what will become some nice extensions.
Especially the drag+drop form editor and the intuitive animations toolkit will be two things that will make dojo even more popular and easier to use.
All the best you guys and have a great summer …

… we will be able to deliver much quicker, much cooler applications to the user. No installation needed, just an online connection. Not that I was not already talking about that for a while, but there was no hook between the position that your device knows and the web app you are running. Google Geear LocationAPI will provide it. It’s great to see the technologies go the right way to really provide the power to enable easier writing of really good apps. Let’s see what people come up with …
Btw, watch this video it is very nice in showing what gears is good for and what is yet to come, and you can hear dojo over and over again :-)!

dojo.explore("Berlin", "Saturday May 31, 2008 at 3pm");
dojo.beer();
dojo.dinner();
notTooTired = true;
while (notTooTired) {
    dojo.clubbing();
}

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