Ripping mobility from the clutches of telecom
Archive for October, 2008
Small Systems FTW!!
Oct 20th
I had heard that there was a great presentation floating around by Steve Yegge about dynamic languages, virtual machines, and optimization. And I forget what got it in front of me, but yesterday I hit the transcript of the talk, definitely recommended reading even though it seems really long.
Stuff that I particularly liked was the talk about JIT optimization techniques (polymorphic inline caches, trace trees. Fantastic! Wish I had more time to keep up on stuff like that), introducing a new (unknown) language, and his commentary about systems optimization and local vs global optimization. I loved this:
Small systems are not only easier to optimize, they’re possible to optimize. And I mean globally optimize.
So when we talk about performance, it’s all crap. The most important thing is that you have a small system. And then the performance will just fall out of it naturally.
Loved it so much I’m considering developing a tattoo design around it. I’ve seen some horrid atrocities committed in the name of optimization, and then seen those systems fail outright at what they were supposed to be doing.
Definitely worth the time to read through. Even if you’re too ADD to read it, at least skim.
Mobile 2.0 Event on Nov 3rd in San Francisco
Oct 15th
The topics and schedule are now posted for the 2008 Mobile 2.0 event in San Francisco. We’ve separated out a “Builder Track” in the afternoon with presentations more suited to engineering/technical/design folks, and have an all day long Business track covering topics that should be of interest no matter what role you play. I think it’s still the best value you can find for a day long conference. Online registration is open, hope to see you there!
Rejiggered the Whatchamacallit
Oct 10th
I hadn’t posted for a while, and then when I tried to found that my WordPress admin interface was all screwy. Probably something I did, but I’m not sure what. And it’s languished for a few weeks while I was trying to find a few minutes to debug it. Finally I just gave in and installed the new version of WordPress over what I had and let it do it’s upgrade magic. Kapow! Admin interface alive again.
What I was originally going to post was that there was a Mobile Monday last Monday (kinda late for that now). But instead I can post a pointer to the presentation that Nikunj from Oracle gave about AtomDB. One of the striking things about what they’re working on is that it’s from some folks who actually deeply understand both mobile and web technologies.
Example: Check out the mention of ACID vs. BASE models of distributed application development. Read the ACM Queue article about BASE. The CAP (Consistency/Available/Partition Tolerance) Theorem is something I bring up frequently in discussions. If you find areas where you can relax consistency constraints you can make a system work at a much higher volume and generally a lot faster. I love finding areas where I can do that in putting something together, always feels like a magic trick when you get it right.
Interesting that this general scaling principle from loosely coupled web applications translates pretty directly to intermittently connected mobile applications as well. There’s lots of good nuggets in there, great presentation from Nikunj!
There should be a binary form of the Windows Mobile version of the AtomDB work up on the feed technology site some time soon. They’re working on being able to get the source code out there as well, but apparently that might be a bit longer in coming. Unfortunate, cause I would love to have something of the sort for my N810. Generally they’re looking for feedback about the technique, discussion of development models and APIs, and to try get a community going around web programming for mobile devices. There should be more info and downloads up on the site soon. In the meantime ping them if you’re interested in the work.
