JavaScript, a Disappointment

Yesterday I needed an improved version of the JavaScript textarea widget. Ah! I'll write my own text editor.

That's not a trivial task, but it's the core of my C++ book (an excellent tutorial, but sadly it dates back to DOS). I had already done the design and the step-by-step, how to build it thinking. That's probably half the battle. I thought that I could have a working, if minimal, text editor in about a day.

Nope. Was into the project for about an hour when it came time to program the Insert key to toggle insert/overstrike modes. Brick wall. There was no way to distinguish Insert from the minus sign. None. And this in Opera, which is the best of the PC browsers.

Redesigned the project to work with the unimproved JavaScript textarea widget.

As I write this, Obama is pardoning the turkey at the White House. I am not pardoning this turkey.

Storage under Technological Deflation

Around 1980 I worked for a small time-sharing company. We held a little party to celebrate the day we added one more disk drive, reaching a full gigabyte. (The drives each held 80MB. They were about 18 inches square, 40 inches tall. They filled a room about 15x20 feet.)

Yesterday I flipped through a BH Photo catalog. (Good company, great catalog, good but not great prices.) A terabyte drive is now $100.

What does it mean for software that disk storage is now nearly free? I'm thinking about it.

What does it mean for software managers that 24 inch, 1920x1200 LCD monitors are down to $200? It means your programmers should have them! They will love you fand productivity will rise. (This from personal experience. I upgraded when the price broke through the $500 barrier, replacing my 2x2 array of 19" CRTs with one flatscreen. It now serves two PCs, Windows and Linux, via a KVM switch.)

Back to writing SketchUp Rubies. WebDialog front-ends in JavaScript, SketchUp API in Ruby. Monty spends his days with Kitten, not with me.