I am going to gloss over the meeting itself, as I imagine numerous other blog posts will cover that ground. Instead I would like to highlight a chat that Colden and I had with Len Coia, a local programmer interested in picking up Python.

Chromebooks for Development #

The CR-48 that Google sent out to some thousands of people (including myself) was a basic piece of hardware. In order to disable boot protection you had to pull out the battery and flip a switch. To modify the BIOS you had unscrew the laptop and put a strip of electrical tape on the motherboard. Needless to say, getting another OS onto this machine was never intended by Google, and Len was willing to give Chrome OS a shot. But is the web ready for day-to-day programming?

Coding Online #

There are a growing number of editors available on the web (Cloud9, Koding, and Compilr to name a few). However, none of these come close to the power of the behemoths (Visual Studio, Eclipse, and Xcode) and I can't make any guesses as to when we will see something that powerful. If you want to work on web-based languages things are looking good, but beyond that we're still waiting for bigger and better editors.

The D Language #

Finally Colden and I spread the love of the D Language. The Circular Studios organization on Github is growing by the week, proving that D is more than ready for game programming and other intensive software. It's an exciting language and community to work with, and Len left the meetup promising to explore and learn.

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