Dream Code April 26, 2008
So, I just recently finished reading Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg of Salon.com. It is about an open-source software project that is trying to make a personal information manager that is flexible. The main shtick is that you can “stamp” items as different kinds of things, like email, calendar event, etc. You can also sync your instances, and share with other users.
It kinda makes me want to download Chandler, and give it a whirl, even though, according to some friends of mine, it is already vaporware. I am more optimistic. I think they still have a chance to pull it through. I think that the project was simply too large for them to be able to leverage an open-source community fast enough. People simply lost interest before the core developers had something to give them. They still seem to be moving along, bit by bit.
For a fun time, check out Wired magazine’s Vaporware awards (Chandler hasn’t made the list yet, by a long shot).
The book was excellent. I found the pace a bit slow at times, but the handing of some of the major problems with software design and construction were handled beautifully. The best thing about it was that it managed to do the one thing that any good book must do: make me want to read more books. In this case, it has made me want to redouble my efforts to get through Kurzweil, and I am considering reading some of Knuth’s works as well.
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