Yet Another Linux Blog

Do you remember the story of Viaweb, Paul Graham’s creation? It was a website which allowed people to quickly and easily create online stores. It was written using the programming language LISP, which was kind of unusual and very cool. Take a look at Viaweb’s original site, courtesy of archive.org. That was 1996.

Fast forward to 2006. There is a newcomer to the web, called Shopify. It is a website which allows people to quickly and easily create online stores. It is written using the programming language Ruby, which is kind of unusual and very cool. Sound familiar?

What’s next? Well, I’ll tell you. I bet Shopify will be sold to an Internet giant in 2008 (Viaweb was sold to Yahoo in 1998), perhaps Google this time. And in 2016, there will be a new website, written in another uncommon language, which will allow people to quickly and easily create online stores. What will it be called?

There was a /. article about the “Flash application development framework” today. Flash has certainly come a long way from its humble beginnings. It’s also becoming more Open and Free over time.

• GNU Gnash - a Free Flash player
• osflash.org - a hub site for Open Source Flash
• Wikipedia: ActionScript
• Wikipedia: ECMAScript

Gnash is unfortunately two whole versions of Flash behind. It supports SWFv7, when Adobe is already up to version 9.

ActionScript v3 is supposed to comply with the ECMAScript v3/v4 standard, which is a GOOD thing. What that means in practical terms is confusing: just take a look at the table in the ECMAScript Wikipedia article.

This has nothing to do with Linux or business or sustainability, but Google Video has two David Hasselhoff music videos that are totally awesome (for some values of awesome):

• Hooked on a Feeling
• Jump In My Car