pwnt.be

Well, it’s only November, but since everyone’s probably put up a Christmas tree already, I might as well make three predictions for 2008. They probably won’t come true though.

A fortune teller

Operator overloading for Java. I love Java. Really. The more C++ I write, the more I realize how beautiful Java is. But operator overloading would be nice. Sure, they had good intentions when they left it out, but let’s be frank: Java is hardly consistent when it comes to, say, string operations. Either be explicit and require

if ("foobar".equals("foo".concat("bar"))
// Or even use |new String()| if you want to get anal

or overload both operators, as in

if ("foobar" == "foo" + "bar")

but don’t go about mixing them, as is currently the case, i.e.

if ("foobar".equals("foo" + "bar"))

A push model for content feeds. RSS and Atom are ubiquitous. So ubiquitous that it makes you wonder if the cost of their simplicity isn’t too high. Web-based aggregators aside—and even they suffer—, the current pull model means an aggregator on a client machine has to perform many superfluous HTTP requests. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to push (only) new content from any number of textual data sources over a single TCP socket. Alternatively, a protocol could be developed that merely notifies user agents of updates, so they know when to reload a certain feed.

Interesting content. I will blog about things that actually concern you and your everyday life. You will be most pleased and erect a statue for me.