Wombchimp asks: "For all of us who program in Java, the development kit is vital to do the slightest piece of coding. But I seriously doubt that there is one person who has not made some custom utility class to fill a void in the JDK. Why is there no real widely known organisation to collate and develop an add-on development kit which could fill this void and collect a database of useful utility classes? Most sites seem to offer full blown applications, but the odds are it took some useful assistant classes to build it. The closest I've managed to find is the Giant Java Tree, which isn't really organised enough to see if what you want has already been coded, and Gnu's Java Library, which doesn't really have enough. What do you think? Is there some site already filling this gap? Or is this idea a waste of time? "

This not so, Anonymous Coward asks: "I am involved in a new Internet startup: a B2B Exchange. This will be an auction site where my commodity industry (based in Asia and Eastern Europe) gets together to buy and sell. The business premise is valid. My dilemma: "build or buy" the technology?" A not too uncommon question in the IT world, and one that greatly depends on your market and the resources you have available. Read on for more information...

GenericBoy writes: "The first edition of The Orbiten Free Software Survey is out online. Some of the stats are number of authors and projects, the top 10 contributing authors, how many MB are in all of the free software projects put together (!) and a bunch more. " Now, as they themselves point out in the their Scope and Method, the methodology is crude, and I don't think Orbiten could quite submit it to Nature yet or anything, but it's an interesting bunch of stats.

mr.e@home.com writes: "Flashingyellow.com has started up a contest to port the DivX MPEG-4 codec to the Macintosh platform. The goal is a completely open-sourced, cross-platform codec for use with Quicktime (hoping the Linux port of Quicktime ever gets completed). Prize is $5000 and an iMac DV Special Edition."

Kailden asks: "I've run across several references to Ruby, a scripting language that claims to be a hybrid of Perl and Python. Supposedly, this language has taken Japan by storm. I'm looking for Slashdot's verdict before jumping in. Has anyone outside the Ruby site used this language? What advantages/disadvantages have you found?"

David M. Press asks: "Why is it that Ada 95 is not in greater use in Open Source projects? It can compile to machine code or java bytecode, it has built-in tasking (threading), it supports both the procedural and object-oriented paradigms, and it is very human-readable (based off of pascal syntax). And best of all, the GNAT project (based off of GCC) provides a fully conformant Ada 95 compiler for multiple platforms. What more can you ask for?" Good point. Is Ada just a victim of obscurity or are there real reasons not to use it?

zpengo asks: "The blessing and curse of CGI is that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of ways to accomplish any given task. All languages have certain strengths and weaknesses, and there is no "best" CGI scripting language. I'm wondering what the community has learned about CGI languages through their experiences. Which languages go best with which tasks? (Also, are there any less-known languages that work well for particular circumstances?)"

scode writes: "IBM's has finally released a preview of their JDK 1.3 for Linux, and it's just as fast as their 1.1.8! This is great news for Java on Linux, because it's the first Java 2 compliant Linux JVM that's really fast. "

How would you dip your feet in the water, learning enough to start dabbling with kernel development? Scott Maxwell might end up as the guide for a fresh batch of aspiring programmers, with his Linux Core Kernel Commentary. Starting with a lesson on the history and philosophy behind free software, you can learn enough to start contributing on your own.

GenericBoy writes: "The four first round winners for each category of the Software Carpentry competition have been announced. It's really exciting to see all these potential replacements for tools that are in such wide-spread use. If you haven't heard of Software Carpentry yet, they're hosting a competition (for BIG $$$) for developing Free tools in the Configure, Build, Bug-tracking and Testing categories." As source code becomes less and less an obscure concept, it's good to see that some people are working to make its construction less obscure as well.

schvin writes: "While this does require a free logon, please comment over at the Java Developer Connection to request that Sun port future JDK releases to FreeBSD. You can vote here. "

The Apache Jakarta Project has reached another milestone with their release of a 100% Java-based regex package. This suite is based on original work by Jonathan Locke, which he has graciously donated to the ASF.

Lightborn writes: "The Big Ball of Mud Development Model examines exactly why so many projects (software and otherwise) end up looking like a bowl of spaghetti. A good list of things not to do when developing a project."

fosh asks: "Out of some discussions going on in response to the Gnome-Microsoft connection I have come to ask myself, (and the Slashdot community) the following question: What is really necessary in a User interface? What is the set of elements that is required, what are the elements that make the user's experience better? What are the inherent problems with MacOS, Windows, Gnome, KDE? Why are computers still hard to use for people like my mother, and how can we make this better?" Of course, the words "user interfaces" usually means "visual user interface." Voice recognition has come a long way in 10 years, and in another 10, we'll probably be able to talk to our machines in plain...well...anything! When this happens, will these ideas still hold merit?

Losing my love of PERL asks: "OK, here's the skinny: I've been trying to figure this out for quite a while now, and nothing is working. I need to send a proper e-mail attachment (i.e. something that will show up as a paper clip in Outlook) from an NT command line to be called by a PERL script (or better yet, just sent by the script). I've tried several modules and programs, including Blat, Mail::Sender, Mail::Sendmail, but every time the attachment is just shoved into the body of the e-mail. Does anyone have a solution to my problems?"

Couple of Perl Bits fell into the bin worth noting today: dlc writes, "The results of the Perl Poetry Content are in, and are available." If you're into this sort of thing, you'll dig it. A lot of clever stuff there. Course the sonnet generator is probably my favorite... hack it to generate rock lyrics, and I can start a band and record a debut album. ;) If that's not weird enough for you, check out the PerlOS Project. A PerlWM, a PerlSH, and more. It will strike fear into even the most hardened of Perl Monks.

Python is an object-oriented scripting language, similiar in ideas (if not in style) to Perl. It's getting more and more popular, as people discover the benefits brought by its simple style. It's a natural under Windows, thanks to good object-orientation. Like many free software projects, though, the Windows port of Python has suffered from poor documentation. Until now, that is. [Updated 15:00GMT by timothy -- fixed link to tutorial.](Read more.)

FocaJonathan asks: "We are creating a Web-based app that pulls down color attributes from a user specified Web page and builds a custom page for users trying to maintain the color scheme from the specified page. Most of the time we can simply grab stuff from the body tag and look for tables and font colors used. However, periodically somebody does something wacky and we end up with the same color for a foreground and background color. When this happens, we would like to automatically select a pleasing, high contrast color given the one we already have. As dynamic page generation grows this will be a useful question, but I'm sure somebody must have explored this for map highlighting, dynamic copyright additions, or some visual design project. Any ideas out there?" The problem many people have been struggling with for years, though: How do you technically define "pleasing"?

Simon Cozens writes "I've written a summary of what's new in the 5.6.0 release of Perl for this www.perl.com article. " The article does a good job of evaluating what's come out - worth reading if you're a Perl Monk

Frustrated Programmer asks: "I'm a programmer with seven years of experience on various platforms/languages. The past few years, I've primarily freelanced, building my expertise in C/Unixes/Oracle, dabbled in Perl a bit. Since my last contract, I haven't been able to find any work at all. I've learned Java2 to update my skills, I know C++ from university, however, I can't seem to get a break from any companies. I get the same response, no Java experience, or no OOP experience. I'm wondering if this is a problem systematic of Canadian companies (specifically here in Montreal), or do any of my American cousins have run into the same problem? Anybody care to share their experiences?"