E-Scribe News : a programmer’s blog

About Me

PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

Book Project

I'm co-authoring a book, "Python Web Development with Django", with Jeff Forcier and Wesley Chun. It will be published by Prentice Hall in July 2008, but is available for pre-ordering on Amazon now.

Colophon

This site is built on a fresh trunk checkout of Django, running on Python 2.5.1, served by Apache and mod_python. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive.

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Copyright 2008
by Paul Bissex
and E-Scribe New Media

Dabble DB

I can't remember the last time a software demo made me involuntarily say "holy crap" so many times. In a good way, I mean.

Dabble DB, in case you haven't heard of it, is a browser-based database exploration/development tool. The interface alone is inspiringly clear, elegant, and rich. And then there's what it actually does with the data. We've all done these things, but we've had to do them in much slower, more laborious ways.

I can see how this demo has sparked interest in Seaside, the framework it's built on. And I can see why web application programming challenges should all have an "Except Avi" clause.

If you develop web applications that use databases, you absolutely must watch this. It's inspiring, though it's also a little depressing. If you make it all the way through the demo without seeing a feature you want to steal, either you're a web app demigod or you're deep in denial.

Monday, April 24th, 2006
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2 comments

Some related posts: How not to advocate via Google Code • From PHP to Python • Django.June • An embarrassment of RichIAs • Liking jQuery • Advice on sequencing items in web interfaces? • PHP and view/controller separation • JavaScript and the thickening client
• Comment from Andrew, later that day

That's pretty rad, but I'm not sure it'd be that difficult to develop. Time consuming most definately. It's very impressive and quite polished.

• Comment from Andrew, later that day

Not following the Seaside link was a mistake. Will this put Smalltalk back on the map again? Or... on the map like Ruby is from Rails?

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