Hell broken loose!!!
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Ok, yes I know. There is a delay yet again! Delays seem to have become an inseparable part of this project.
Yes, the website was supposed to be ready this week. And this time it REALLY was...... until all hell broke lose....
It goes like this... I had planned to make the original site in asp.net and it was going really well, until... I reached this license generation part. Now although .net is a photocopy of Java in quite a lot of places, there is one place where they totally differ and that is the crytpgraphy api, which is completly different in both of them in terms of both implementation and interface. Now of course I didnt know of this from before so I was really pretty shocked...... so i decided to do some interop stuff, but guess what... that doesnt work either between these two!!! The format of keys generated is completly different and incompatible, so as AS itself is in Java, the keys had to be generated using Java code too.
Thus finally, I had to resort to the solution which I was absolutely, totally dreading.
I had to code the entire site in Java!!!
Now I have never used java for web development stuff before. So the all nighters began.... googling , reading, learning a whole bunch of stuff.
It was ( is, as I am still doing it) a nightmare. The Java world is full of crappy open source frameworks which although are nice but have no docs, are a pain to learn and they have almost no ide support. And people who attended antlr 2005 workshop probably know how much i hate tools without ide support.
So first I looked at struts, which was complex as hell... then after reading some opinions on the web, I decided jsf & hibernate is the way to go.
And really after taking a real close look at both .Net and Java for web developement I am absolutely compelled to say this to all the java web developers-
Java SUCKS!!!
The implementation of JSF is half baked and nowhere near what MS has done with asp.net. Sun is really playing catch up on this.
Hibernate is just waaay too complex. Its documentation absolutely, totally sucks and its taken me the whole day today figuring out its mapping stuff. I now think it would have been faster had I just written the queries by hand.
With asp.net all you need is Visual Studio and Msdn along with MySql, you can even use asp web matrix, if you want a cheap ide. They got real nice documentation and all you really need is a single good book to write your web app.
But with Java I got all sorts of stuff installed. I got this MyEclipse plugin for eclipse, Java Studio Creator, Apache Tomcat and these zillions of lib files.
I am going crazy searching for and reading all the different docs and oh my, are these Ides slow or what!!! Java Studio is sooooo sluggish!!!
Also the fact that I caught a bad cold and was absolutely down for 2 days in between all this, did not help matters either :(
So right now I am sitting up all night and day trying to make sense of jsf & hibernate and trying to complete the site. I am looking to setup the shopping system first within a couple of days or so, thus purchasing can begin. I will complete and update the entire site as time passes.
I guess the guys from Sun need to give me some reward for learning JSF & Hibernate in record time ;-)
Believe me, as fed up as you guys probably are, each passing day I feel more and more guilty for not completing the site. I really am trying my best and hope to have the site up as soon as possible.
P.S. - if you know of any nice tutorials/books/free jsf components that can help me complete the site fast please let me know.
Yes, the website was supposed to be ready this week. And this time it REALLY was...... until all hell broke lose....
It goes like this... I had planned to make the original site in asp.net and it was going really well, until... I reached this license generation part. Now although .net is a photocopy of Java in quite a lot of places, there is one place where they totally differ and that is the crytpgraphy api, which is completly different in both of them in terms of both implementation and interface. Now of course I didnt know of this from before so I was really pretty shocked...... so i decided to do some interop stuff, but guess what... that doesnt work either between these two!!! The format of keys generated is completly different and incompatible, so as AS itself is in Java, the keys had to be generated using Java code too.
Thus finally, I had to resort to the solution which I was absolutely, totally dreading.
I had to code the entire site in Java!!!
Now I have never used java for web development stuff before. So the all nighters began.... googling , reading, learning a whole bunch of stuff.
It was ( is, as I am still doing it) a nightmare. The Java world is full of crappy open source frameworks which although are nice but have no docs, are a pain to learn and they have almost no ide support. And people who attended antlr 2005 workshop probably know how much i hate tools without ide support.
So first I looked at struts, which was complex as hell... then after reading some opinions on the web, I decided jsf & hibernate is the way to go.
And really after taking a real close look at both .Net and Java for web developement I am absolutely compelled to say this to all the java web developers-
Java SUCKS!!!
The implementation of JSF is half baked and nowhere near what MS has done with asp.net. Sun is really playing catch up on this.
Hibernate is just waaay too complex. Its documentation absolutely, totally sucks and its taken me the whole day today figuring out its mapping stuff. I now think it would have been faster had I just written the queries by hand.
With asp.net all you need is Visual Studio and Msdn along with MySql, you can even use asp web matrix, if you want a cheap ide. They got real nice documentation and all you really need is a single good book to write your web app.
But with Java I got all sorts of stuff installed. I got this MyEclipse plugin for eclipse, Java Studio Creator, Apache Tomcat and these zillions of lib files.
I am going crazy searching for and reading all the different docs and oh my, are these Ides slow or what!!! Java Studio is sooooo sluggish!!!
Also the fact that I caught a bad cold and was absolutely down for 2 days in between all this, did not help matters either :(
So right now I am sitting up all night and day trying to make sense of jsf & hibernate and trying to complete the site. I am looking to setup the shopping system first within a couple of days or so, thus purchasing can begin. I will complete and update the entire site as time passes.
I guess the guys from Sun need to give me some reward for learning JSF & Hibernate in record time ;-)
Believe me, as fed up as you guys probably are, each passing day I feel more and more guilty for not completing the site. I really am trying my best and hope to have the site up as soon as possible.
P.S. - if you know of any nice tutorials/books/free jsf components that can help me complete the site fast please let me know.
Antlr Studio release information
Thursday, October 20, 2005
The site was down for the past 2 days cause my host was having some problems so i couldnt post this earlier.
This is for all the people who want to know the details of ANTLR Studio's release.
The beta has already expired. I had originally planned to release on 19th itself. But it seems it will take a few more days. It should be done by end of this week though.
There will be a fully functional 15 day evaluation available of Antlr Studio on release.
The cost of full version will be 49$.
Antlr Studio will be available at www.placidsystems.com (not available right now). On release antlrstudio.com will be redirected to placidsystems.com .
You will need to completly remove the beta of ANTLR Studio to install the final release, as the package names differ.
I have been unable to solve the conflict with the ANTLR Eclipse plugin, so you will need to uninstall that too.
Antlr Studio will ship with a very slightly modified redistributable version of antlr 2.7.5. None of the modifications will affect your programs. They are just basically a few access modifier changes and a new package has been added. The changes are reuqired only during debugging. So you can ship your release quality code with the 'official' antlr 2.7.5 and it will work just fine.
If you want to be automatically informed of the release of ANTLR Studio, please send me an email with the subject 'Inform Me'.
If you found some bugs while evaluting ANTLR Studio, you can still tell me and they will be cured before release.
For those who have already started working on projects with ANTLR Studio and were counting on the 19th release you can send me a reuqest for a special beta and I will provide you a special evaluation version which wont expire till final version is released.
This is for all the people who want to know the details of ANTLR Studio's release.
The beta has already expired. I had originally planned to release on 19th itself. But it seems it will take a few more days. It should be done by end of this week though.
There will be a fully functional 15 day evaluation available of Antlr Studio on release.
The cost of full version will be 49$.
Antlr Studio will be available at www.placidsystems.com (not available right now). On release antlrstudio.com will be redirected to placidsystems.com .
You will need to completly remove the beta of ANTLR Studio to install the final release, as the package names differ.
I have been unable to solve the conflict with the ANTLR Eclipse plugin, so you will need to uninstall that too.
Antlr Studio will ship with a very slightly modified redistributable version of antlr 2.7.5. None of the modifications will affect your programs. They are just basically a few access modifier changes and a new package has been added. The changes are reuqired only during debugging. So you can ship your release quality code with the 'official' antlr 2.7.5 and it will work just fine.
If you want to be automatically informed of the release of ANTLR Studio, please send me an email with the subject 'Inform Me'.
If you found some bugs while evaluting ANTLR Studio, you can still tell me and they will be cured before release.
For those who have already started working on projects with ANTLR Studio and were counting on the 19th release you can send me a reuqest for a special beta and I will provide you a special evaluation version which wont expire till final version is released.
Antlr Studio at ANTLR 2005 Workshop
Sunday, October 16, 2005
I will be presenting ANTLR Studio at the ANTLR 2005 workshop on 20th October. I wont be there myself, but I have sent a video file containing the presentation. The file will be available for download once the workshop is finished. The video is in flash format just like the demonstration videos on the site.
It has a complete demo of AS with my voice in the background explaining all the philosphies behind every feature. Also the last part contains some stuff about how I managed to overcome some technical difficulties. Its particulaly interesting if you are an IDE developer :)
I guess I will replace the current demonstration videos with ones in the presentation. They explain the stuff far better.
Oh, and I am working real hard to do a final release before the workshop. Lets see how it goes. Time is running. So I will go work on it now and blog later ;-)
It has a complete demo of AS with my voice in the background explaining all the philosphies behind every feature. Also the last part contains some stuff about how I managed to overcome some technical difficulties. Its particulaly interesting if you are an IDE developer :)
I guess I will replace the current demonstration videos with ones in the presentation. They explain the stuff far better.
Oh, and I am working real hard to do a final release before the workshop. Lets see how it goes. Time is running. So I will go work on it now and blog later ;-)
ANTLR Studio download available
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Yes, I am still alive :)
You can finally see a download button on the main page now :)
Note that I am still calling this the beta as the new web site and shopping system are not quite ready yet. Also this download does not contain any manuals (not that you should need any).
It will expire on 19th October and I should probably have the final release out by then. But still I am not making any promises so there is no official release date as such.
Also please remove the 'ANTLR Eclipse plugin' before installing ANTLR Studio.
Due to some weird reason AS seems to use the antlr provided with ANTLR Eclipse instead of its own that why you need to physically remove the ANTLR Eclipse files from the plugins directory.
If anyone can tell me how to prevent this and make both the plugins play together it would be great.
If you encounter any bugs please tell me. They can still be fixed before the final release is out :)
For those who dont already know, the price of ANTLR Studio for a Single user license will be -
49$
Once the beta expires and final release is out, you can try it some more by downloading the 15 day evaluation or just buy it :)
You can finally see a download button on the main page now :)
Note that I am still calling this the beta as the new web site and shopping system are not quite ready yet. Also this download does not contain any manuals (not that you should need any).
It will expire on 19th October and I should probably have the final release out by then. But still I am not making any promises so there is no official release date as such.
Also please remove the 'ANTLR Eclipse plugin' before installing ANTLR Studio.
Due to some weird reason AS seems to use the antlr provided with ANTLR Eclipse instead of its own that why you need to physically remove the ANTLR Eclipse files from the plugins directory.
If anyone can tell me how to prevent this and make both the plugins play together it would be great.
If you encounter any bugs please tell me. They can still be fixed before the final release is out :)
For those who dont already know, the price of ANTLR Studio for a Single user license will be -
49$
Once the beta expires and final release is out, you can try it some more by downloading the 15 day evaluation or just buy it :)
