Lots happening for eBay developers

eBay has some new Java and SOAP APIs and is not afraid to let the world know. Jeffrey McManus has an article on MSDN on creating an eBay search application using VB .NET and the eBay SDK for Windows. On April 20 Jeffrey will show the Bay.NET user’s group how to create eBay applications using .NET. The meeting takes place at Microsoft’s San Francisco office….

Macromedia Flex

Macromedia officially introduced Flex today. Rich UI through Flash, similar to Laszlo. Later this year Macromedia plans to release a new Flex development tool code-named Brady with visual layout, code editing, debugging, and data connectivity tools for creating Flex applications in Dreamweaver. IBM already has a Flex WebSphere Studio plugin. Runs on Java app servers and you can download a free developer version on the Flex site….

Programmers At Work: 2004

This week’s Software Development Conference & Expo featured a panel of software experts discussing the past and future of software engineering. Susan Lammers, author of Programmers At Work, chaired the panel. Panelists were Dan Bricklin, Robert Carr, Andy Hertzfeld, Scott Kim, Jaron Lanier, Ray Ozzie, Jef Raskin, and Charles Simonyi. Scott Rosenberg has a pretty thorough write-up on Salon.com….

IBM attempts to patent code separation

IBM filed a patent application last week for a “method and apparatus for conducting business via the worldwide Web in which business programming is isolated from Web user interface programming.” Can JSP + Java Beans + J2EE backend really be patented? Guess we will have to wait and see….

Career Calculus

Eric Sink has some really good analysis of looking at acquired knowledge over a career span. I agree that learning over time is vitally important, there needs to be someone there to realize the value of your cluefulness. There are also free ways to increase cluefulness. I look to user groups and their SIGs. Java user group, Microsoft regional site. If you are interested in more San Francisco Bay area resources let me know. I check out conferences in the area I may be able to browse during a lunch break or an evening. Exhibition passes and keynotes are usually…