Cook Computing

Version 0.9.1 of XML-RPC.NET is now available at www.xml-rpc.net.

Key features includes:

• Distribution includes version of library which runs on .NET Compact Framework.
• DateTime parsing bug fixed (caused problems in particular with it-IT locale)
• XmlRpcProxyGen caches generated assemblies to avoid leakage if XmlRpcProxyGen is called multiple times for the same interface.

Via Sriram Krishnan I came across the Singularity research project at Microsoft. Singularity is a managed code operating system, a key feature being "dependability", whereby the system runs as expected, without instability due to security vulnerabilities, third party code, and uncertain behavior when software is installed or uninstalled. In much the same way that msil and metadata provide type safety and verifiability in individual managed code programs, they are used correspondingly at the OS level in Singularity, MSIL being using for binary system interfaces and metadata being used to detect problems as soon as possible. Configuration problems are detected as early as possible in the sequence design - compile - install - load - run and if a problem occurs at runtime it is always handled immediately.

Singularity provides strong process isolation in which once a process has been created its code cannot be affected either by accident or by malicious code. Communication between processes is provided by strictly typed bi-directional channels.

This sounds like where Windows should be heading, not least to escape from the current mess its in because of security problems. At the program level we have seen the huge advantages of running managed code with its type safety and verifiability, and its exciting to think those principles could be extended to the whole OS

One thing that always triggers off a mini-rant in my mind is misuse of 7 +- 2 urban legend, for example "The human mind can effectively remember 7 +- 2 things" in this otherwise interesting Smalltalk advocacy article by Don Raab, used here to argue that one way Smalltalk is better than Java is that it is less complex, for example that it has only 5 keywords instead of Java's 59 or more. This debunking (PDF) of the legend by Derek Jones is worth reading to learn what George Miller's original paper - The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information - was really about and why it should not be applied outside the narrow limits of what Miller was writing about.

Web applications which dynamically update their web pages without refreshing the whole page are in the news a lot these days, for example the various Google applications.

Adaptive Path has an article on what they call "Ajax" - Asynchronous JavaScript + XML, and Bill Bercik has a tutorial on how to use the XMLHttpRequest JavaScript object, the key component which enables you to make requests to a server without refreshing the web page(via Windley's Technometria). Jason Fried warns that people shouldn't get too carried away with the technology and should always consider the user experience.

In case, like me, you've been wondering what has been happening to IronPython in the last few months, the PyCon 2005 keynote session Python on the .NET Platform on Wednesday March 23rd will hopefully coincide with the release a much more complete implementation.