Distributed Version Control is still a bit over my head, but my general feeling is this: so far, I haven’t seen that git, bzr, or Mercurial offer anything I really, really need over Subversion. And I already know, like, and have integrated Subversion into my workflow. For now, I see no great reason for me personally to switch to DVCS. Your situation may be different, though. Visit site »
Clint Ecker has a nice review on Ars of my buddy James Bennett’s new book, Practical Django Projects. Visit site »
James makes the case for choosing HTML over XHTML. He makes several good points, but overlooks what is, to me, the single biggest reason to use HTML: because HTML is clearly the future, not XHTML. Today, the choice is mostly arbitrary. In my opinion, neither markup language offers significant advantages or disadvantages compared to the other. But, it’s clear (at least to me) that HTML5 is where things are going, so stepping away from XHTML now may better prepare you for the future.
That having been said, I still keep using XHTML out of habit, even if I think HTML is the better choice. :) Visit site »
James Bennett talks again about X-UA-Compatible (Microsoft’s IE8 version targeting mechanisim). This one is funny, and probably accurate — but it still doesn’t make me get that up in arms over the fact that I have to add a meta tag to my documents. Even if I have to do something similar again in a few years with MS releases IE9, I’m not that upset about it. Why? One, because getting up set isn’t going to change anything, and two, because in the time it takes people to write ALA articles about this stuff, I could re-jigger 150 sites for IE8 and move on with my life. To put it bluntly: I disagree with with MS is doing, here, but not passionately enough for me to spend a lot of time fretting over it. Visit site »
For anyone trying to make sense out of the whole IE8 X-UA-Compatible nonsense, James Bennet's explanation is almost certainly the most well-thought out and easy-to-understand one you're going to find. I now have an opinion on this matter. I'm with James: X-No-Thanks.
But even though I have an opinion, it’s not a very strong one. Why? Because, quite frankly, I’m just not that interested. If X-UA-Compatible lands in IE8, I'll suck it up and spend 20 minutes putting the tag in all my sites, toss a few more curse words Microsoft's way, and move the fuck on. Ultimately, for those of us doing standards-based work, this isn't that big a deal. If we're doing things right, and this actually happens, it means we have to put one measly meta tag in our code form now on. Big f’ing deal.
Here’s hoping it doesn’t ever happen, though. Visit site »
Have to agree with James’ response to Twitter developer Alex Payne’s Shared Hosting is a Ghetto. Visit site »
My former co-worker James ahres his insights on some of the stuff we’ve been discussing here at JeffCroft.com. Gotta say, I sort of hate how James always manages to come off as such a level-headed dude in his blog posts. If only you guys could see what he’s like in real life…
Just teasing, James. :)
Kind of. Visit site »
People ask me this question all the time. The answer, in general, is, “there’s really not one.” Building a monolithic blogging application for Django kind of goes against the grain of most of the best practices for Django development — and James explains this in detail. It’s a good read if you’re curious about the design of Django apps.
What’s more, most of the Django blogging applications that do exist were generally built by a single person for their own personal site, and tend to be customized to that person’s needs, making them less likely to be suitable for your needs.
And, quite frankly, writing a simple blogging app in Django is so damn easy that it just doesn’t feel worth it. Visit site »
James Bennett writes about working with Django without “projects,” but rather using apps directly. Over the past several months, my development projects have mostly jumped to this methodology, based a lot on what I learned from working with Ellington at Mediaphormedia.
But don’t stop at this article — James has been getting back into blogging hardcore, and is trying to write a post every day this month. Almost all of them are Django-related, and they’re all really good. Visit site »
Another day, another Django app that implements a bunch of features I’ve already wasted hours upon hours writing for myself.
Seriously, this is awesome. James Bennett has written an app that adds a whole bunch of useful features onto the built-in Django comments app, including Akismet spam filtration, auto-moderation based on age of the associated object, etc. Really cool stuff. Visit site »
James has a nice post about choosing a web development framework, and especially about switching from J2EE to a dynamic language and framework like Ruby/Rails or Python/Django. Visit site »
Probably the simplest way to add Akismet filtering to comments in your Django site — and without changing Django’s built-in comments app. Visit site »