I’ve changed my mind. See? That’s what having an open mind will do for you! No, seriously, I have changed my mind, and what I’m referring to is the release plans for DP2.

I now realize I was too ambitious. I tried to “pull a Vista” (sorry Microsoft) and come out with a new release with practically everything new, improved, re-engineered, etc. Like Vista, it has resulted in a long delay and a lapse of immediate functionality improvements for interested users. Unlike Vista, I’m actually getting close to done with what I wanted to accomplish, and I’m pretty happy with the result.

So, as I said, my plans have changed. What I’m working on right now is cleaning up my current codebase enough to release something of use on Sourceforge right away. I hope to have a working Subversion repository up by early next week containing what will soon be known as the official DP2 release. Most of what needs to be accomplished before DP2 is formally unveiled is related to documentation, Web site changes, tutorial code, etc., so I figure in the meantime the real core code should be made available to the public for the cutting-edge developers out there to poke at.

Like I said, by early next week, you should be able to check out a real working copy of the DP2 codebase. If you’re just a PHP developer dude or gal who wants to slap a Web site together with a framework in a couple of weeks, don’t touch this with a ten-foot pole. But if you’re an advanced PHP whiz who wants to discover the latest and greatest and help to make it even better, give it a try!

I’d like to compare the current state of software development, particularly “private” Web applications for businesses, to the American landscape of the 1800’s. On the one hand you had the Wild West. Cowboys, indians, land and riches for the taking, almost anything goes, he who’s quickest on the draw wins, etc. OK, I’m kind of exaggerating, but you get the idea. On the other hand, you had the Sophistication of the East. City living, refinement, cultural societies, gala affairs. The Easterners and Westerners couldn’t see eye to eye. The Westerners thought the Easterners were city slickers, weak, soft in the head, didn’t have what it takes to be a man. The Easterners thought the Westerners were dirty, unmannered, uncivilized, didn’t have what it takes to foster the march of industrial and cultural progress.

What does this have to do with software? Well, we have a similar picture here: on one side is the Wild West world of open source, cutting-edge, scripting languages wired together with other components of the server stack through the code equivalent of duck tape and string. Ruby, PHP, Python. Linux or *BSD. Apache, or newcomers like lighttpd. On the other side is the Eastern Sophistication of Java, of WebSphere, of IIS, of ASP.NET, of C#, Windows, Solaris, etc. All respectable, civilized, cultured software supported by sophisticated, respectable, civilized, cultured people. March of the enterprise, of industry, of progress.

Now, like many geeks, I tend to be a Wild West kind of guy. But I do know one thing: the Wild West was only made possible because all those cows were sold to Easterners so they could eat their roast beef. The people who struck it rich in California went back East to buy a mansion in New York — or built a mansion in a sophisticated town like Sacramento. The farmers sold their crops to the city slickers to provide the cultured food for their gala affairs.

The fact is, the West needed the East, just like the East needed the West. And we geeks need the enterprise. While it’s cool to poke fun at “enterprisey” solutions that are over-complicated, over-engineered, and over-priced, we need to remember that our solutions have to be well-documented, well-supported, stable, and fully-featured in order for the West (open source scripting languages, servers, and OSes) to be a truly viable option for the East (big proprietary companies who like big proprietary solutions).

I want the PHP software I develop to be good enough to survive, nay, to thrive in the enterprise. But like the Westerners of old, I like my beef rare and right off the ranch.

Wow, I just found out about this. SketchUp, a cool 3D sketching and modeling tool “for the rest of us” that I played around with at Macworld this January, was recently bought by Google and is now available for free! (There’s still a Pro version for sale though.) Unfortunately, the Mac version isn’t out yet, but hopefully that won’t be long in coming.

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After much time of languish and neglect, Camino is back, and back with a vengence. I’m posting this using the new Camino 1.0 browser for Mac OS X, and I’m extremely impressed. It has all the nice Gecko-y rendering power, yet has a simple Safari-like Cocoa interface and nice Cocoa-style widgets for the HTML forms. It’s fast, seems stable, and has everything I need…except inline spell checking. But I think they’re working on that.

If you’re an OS X user, I highly recommend checking out Camino. It might make you switch from Firefox and Safari all in one go!