chromatic

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chromatic manages Onyx Neon Press, an independent publisher. His areas of expertise include agile software development, language design, and virtual machines for dynamic languages. He is also a published novelist. His books include The Art of Agile Development and Masterminds of Programming.

Masterminds of Programming by chromatic , Federico Biancuzzi March 2009 Print: $39.99 Ebook: $23.99	The Art of Agile Development by chromatic , James Shore October 2007 Print: $39.99 Ebook: $31.99
Perl Hacks by chromatic , Damian Conway , Curtis Poe May 2006 Print: $29.99 Ebook: $23.99	Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook by Ian Langworth , chromatic July 2005 Print: $29.95 Ebook: $23.99
Extreme Programming Pocket Guide by chromatic July 2003 Print: $9.95 Ebook: $4.99	Running Weblogs with Slash by chromatic , Brian Aker , David Krieger January 2002 Print: $39.99

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chromatic blogs at:
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Bryan O'Sullivan on the Power of Haskell

January 16 2009

In 15 years, Haskell has gone from an academic, research-only language to a language usable for real world programs. Real World Haskell co-author Bryan O'Sullivan reflects on the changes in the language and its community when enable the rest of us to stretch our minds as we write software in… read more

John Goerzen on Why You Should Learn Haskell

January 16 2009

Haskell can be a mind-bending language to learn, if you come from a procedural/OO mindset. It's worth the work, according to Real World Haskell co-author John Goerzen. The concepts of purity, laziness, and type safety can help you write better software in whatever language you use. read more

CGI is Dead; mod_perlite is Alive!

January 15 2009

PHP's application deployment model is difficult to beat. Perl has lacked something similar for years -- until now. Byrne Reese and Aaron Stone address the gap between CGI and mod_perl with mod_perlite, one of the features Perl 5 needs most. read more

Transparent Tax Law

January 13 2009

Three ideas converged. Why aren't tax laws available online in easily reusable formats? read more

The Evolution of Python 3

January 10 2009

The Python core developers released Python 3.0 in December 2008, following closely behind Python 2.6. Python creator Guido van Rossum generously agreed to discuss the present and future of the popular programming language, as well as the history of the Python 3.0 revision. read more

Food, Technology, and Energy

January 06 2009

What are the true costs of getting fresh strawberries in Oregon in January? I don't know. Can we find out? read more

Data, Noise, and the Missing Internet Epistemology

December 19 2008

We have more data than ever before, but is there meaning in the noise? Maybe we need a new epistemology for the Internet. read more

What are Your Force Multipliers in Software Development?

December 12 2008

Programming language features and tools are obvious force multipliers for software developers. Development practices are less obvious. Here are some of my favorite productivity improvements. read more

Five Features Perl 5 Needs Now

December 10 2008

Perl is 21 years old and Perl 5 is 14 years old. The language has aged well, but there's room to improve. Here are five features which to make hard things easy and difficult things possible. read more

The RIA and the Polyglot VM

December 03 2008

The Adobe/Microsoft/Sun strategy for producing rich Internet applications can solve most of the problems in developing web applications -- at the cost of a huge step backward away from ubiquitous computing. read more

Artificial Complexity and Internet Applications

December 02 2008

Good programmers tend to be polyglot programmers. I'm not sure that good applications tend to be polyglot applications; perhaps the way we build Internet applications is hazardous in the long term. read more

Small Apps, Loosely-Joined Into Contextual Tasks

November 20 2008

I spend too much time telling my computer how to do things when I should be able to tell it what I want to do. Perhaps it's time for declarative UIs to replace our procedural UIs. read more

Beginners Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming with Perl

November 12 2008

Perl is a great language for processing text and automating tasks. It's also a fully-capable modern programming language, with effective modularization and object oriented capabilities. Though that sounds scary, they're easy to understand (and even easier to accomplish, through shiny modern tools such as Moose and Mouse). read more

How Techies Can Improve Democracy and Governance

October 30 2008

Silona Bonewald is an established technologist as well as an experienced political consultant who believes that well-designed and well-applied technology can improve communication, transparency, and governance in political systems -- and state legislators are listening. Here's how you can help her improve democracy. read more

How Linux Supports More Devices Than Any Other OS, Ever

October 29 2008

Greg-Kroah Hartman discusses why he believes the Linux kernel supports more devices than any other operating system ever has, why binary-only drivers are impractical, immoral, and illegal, and how the kernel development process contributes to the inevitable world domination of free software. read more

Announcing the 2008 O'Reilly Reader Survey

October 28 2008

We spend a lot of time updating our site, and we spend a lot of time agonizing over which book or article or course to feature where. Yet there's one question we need to ask regularly. How do you find what's most useful and interesting? read more

The Sine Qua Non of the Free Desktop

October 16 2008

Pundits of all kinds love to preach that the free desktop needs this feature or that software to succeed. They may be right for certain audiences, but they often miss the single essential feature which gives free desktops an amazing evolutionary edge. read more

What's the Appeal of the iPhone to Developers?

October 13 2008

Raven Zachary and Bill Dudney are co-chairs of the one-day iPhone Live conference in San Jose. O'Reilly News recently talked to them to answer the questions "What's interesting about the iPhone to developers?" and "What hints does the iPhone give to Apple's future plans?" read more

Does Hacking Closed Hardware Hinder Open Hardware?

October 08 2008

I'm profoundly uncomfortable purchasing devices which, by default, do not provide the freedoms I desire. I'm starting to believe it works against my desire for open, unencumbered hardware. read more

How PowerTOP, LatencyTOP, and Five-Second Boot Improve Desktop Linux

September 24 2008

Arjan van de Ven is a Linux kernel hacker and the author of PowerTOP and LatencyTOP. His goal is to fix problems in the Linux desktop to save power, respond more smoothly, and to run faster. This interview explains how. read more

Avoiding Downstream Eddies in Free Software

September 23 2008

Recent discussions about who contributes to the Linux ecosystem have singled out certain companies as freeriders. That almost makes, but misses a greater point: it's their responsibility to contribute to the health of upstream projects. read more

The Present and Future of Ruby and Rails

September 19 2008

Chad Fowler and Rich Kilmer discuss where Ruby and Rails have gone in the past year, whether RESTful composition obviates the need for ORM, what's interesting in the upcoming world of Ruby and Rails, and how Maglev, Rubinius, and other new Ruby implementations contribute to the world of dynamic languages. read more

No EULA for Mozilla Firefox

September 17 2008

Mitchell Baker of Mozilla reports that they have revised their decision to include a EULA-like notification in the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution. The debate over Mozilla's decision reveals two important debates in the free software world. read more

A Beginner's Introduction to Perl Web Programming

September 05 2008

Previous articles in this series showed how to use Perl for text processing and general purpose programming. Now it's time to demonstrate how to use Perl on the web. read more

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You need to enable JavaScript to view more than 15 articles by this author. Does Enterprise Development Have to Be Painful? (Part Two)
Publish Date: May. 7, 2008After several years away from anything resembling enterprise software, chromatic accepted a challenge from SAP Labs to try their new software development platform. What lessons have they learned from dynamic languages and frameworks? Has developing big serious software truly become more agile? In this second of three articles, chromatic uses SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment to build a bare-bones application from the data model to the UI. Does Enterprise Development Have to Be Painful?
Publish Date: Feb. 28, 2008After several years away from anything resembling enterprise software, chromatic accepted a challenge from SAP Labs to try their new software development platform. What lessons have they learned from dynamic languages and frameworks? Has developing big serious software truly become more agile? In this first of three articles, chromatic explores the ecosystem around SAP NetWeaver CE and tackles the first challenge -- installation. Switching Back to Desktop Linux
Publish Date: Jun. 1, 2006Almost everyone at O'Reilly owns an iBook or PowerBook and almost everyone runs Mac OS X. It's not everyone's ideal operating system, however. Recently, free software editor chromatic explained to Mac editor Derrick Story why he switched back to desktop Linux. Here's what he wants in a usable Unix desktop. ONLamp 2005 Survey Results
Publish Date: Dec. 2, 2005We recently ran a survey on ONLamp.com to find out more about our readers. Here are some of the interesting tidbits of information we learned. Tell Us What You Think: The ONLamp Survey
Publish Date: Oct. 11, 2005We're asking ONLamp readers to participate in our annual online survey. We've sweetened the pot with a chance to win books and MAKE magazine subscriptions. Here's how it works. Smartphones
Publish Date: Jul. 8, 2005Just when you think you've made sense of all of the new phones, calling plans, and options, along comes a new batch of hardware. If you're slogging along with old technology and expired calling plans, you're in the same boat as a few of the O'Reilly folks on the Editors List. Here's a recent conversation about smartphones. Password Management
Publish Date: May. 20, 2005A recent thread on the Editors List started with surprise that our work made it to the New York Times attached to a juicy bit of celebrity gossip; then, as usual, it morphed into a discussion of practical uses of technology. Here's an idea for making your personal secrets more secret and less personal. Error Checking
Publish Date: Mar. 14, 2005Should error checking be included in printed books that cover code? Is it worth adding an extra 10% of text in order to ensure that programmers will not forget to check for error conditions? And ultimately, who's responsibility is it to check for errors? These questions bear a multitude of implications. In a recent discussion on the Editor's List, four editors contemplated the pros and cons of including error checking in print texts. Dear Scott/Dear Max
Publish Date: Dec. 17, 2004If there's one constant in the publishing world, it's the give-and-take relationship between editors and authors. A recent thread on the Editors List discussed this relationship among famous authors and editors as captured in their own words. The State of Java
Publish Date: Oct. 19, 2004Is the Java revolution over? Has the big business-friendly approach turned Java into the new COBOL? Is the momentum behind .NET and Mono stealing away the cool factor that Java once enjoyed? Are those even bad things? In a recent discussion on the Editors List, several editors--programmers themselves--debated these questions. Linux and Patent Risks
Publish Date: Aug. 6, 2004OSRM recently commissioned a study that found the Linux kernel potentially infringes on 283 patents. Though some people find cause for alarm, others see this knowledge as a good thing. Here's more information on the study and its findings. OSCON 2004: The SCO Moot Court
Publish Date: Jul. 28, 2004SCO's lawsuits over Linux copyrights and Unix contracts are still ongoing. Monday night featured a mock court, where lawyers presented the arguments of SCO and IBM to the attendees. Here's a rundown. The Pragmatic Programmers Interview
Publish Date: Jun. 24, 2004The Pragmatic Programmers, Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, recently launched their own line of books on pragmatic software development. Since O'Reilly helps to distribute their books, we convinced them to do an interview about self-publishing, the state of the software industry, and how to become better developers. The Making of BSD Hacks
Publish Date: Jun. 3, 2004Dru Lavigne, the author of BSD Hacks, and chromatic wanted to use open source tools to write and edit the book, so they turned to PseudoPOD and Subversion. chromatic writes about how they used these tools to collaborate, write, edit, and produce the book in record time. Paul Graham on Hacking
Publish Date: May. 27, 2004Paul Graham is a hacker, a painter, and an essayist known as much for his thoughtful writings on spam, hacking, and Lisp as for creating the Arc programming language. In this interview with the O'Reilly Network, Paul discusses hacking, creativity, computer science education, and language design. Paul's collection of essays has just been released in a new book from O'Reilly, Hackers & Painters.

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