Google releases something awesome

Oh, man, have I been wanting to talk about this.

This week some brilliant folks at Google released the Google Web Toolkit. This thing makes me excited to be a programmer again. Let's face it, writing Java that turns into JavaScript and HTML? That's wonderful. I don't know really know HTML (does anybody really know HTML?) and I surely know less JavaScript, but I do know Java, so when I saw the Web Toolkit released internally as a beta, I gave it a try.

The first time I wrote a piece of code that both displayed on a browser, and ran through the Eclipse debugger, I saw the magic. Then I showed it to people in my office. Several times. Anytime someone asked. They, too, saw that it was 'magical.' There's potential in this tool, and, I can't wait to discover what people will do with it.

Then I started working on it. With all my free time. My wife misses me. I've written some sample applications, for my own edification, and to help the team find bugs, both in the implementation and documentation.

Take a look at the product, and don't forget to check out the blog and consider joining the mailing list.

More at the Correspondents Dinner: George W. Bush

To be fair, George Bush was fairly self-deprecating, and kinda funny. His presentation was also on YouTube as a single ten-minute presentation.

I've thought a bit more about the two presentations. Bush clearly got more laughs, and was willing to make fun of his foibles and those of his administration ('I survived the White House shakeup!') while Colbert really did meet much more dead response. I think Colbert had a difficult job: balancing the character he portrayed on the show with presenting to the attendees, a very specific audience. His routine was wrong for the audience to which he presented. I sure didn't laugh very much either, as I was sort of stunned with his jokes, which *were* funny, but impressively scathing. I applaud his choices, and hope he doesn't find himself on the unemployment line like Bill Maher and Phil Donahue. Maybe they'll just demote him back to working with Jon.