A Special Kind of Platform

Dr. Dobb's Journal September, 2004

To my way of thinking, every issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal is something special. But in fact, this issue really is special in its look, feel, and content. As you can tell just by thumbing through the magazine, we've changed the paper stock to one that's softer and less glossy, but easier to read. That's what we were promised anyway. While a trial press run wasn't possible, we did pour over other magazines that publish source code on similar paper and felt good about it. We hope you do. too.

That's the "feel" part of the look-and-feel. As for the look part, you'll also notice that DDJ Art Director Margaret Anderson has been tinkering with the page design, in an effort to make DDJ easier to read. She's cleaned up the headlines, punched up the pullquotes, and generally cleared the decks. In all likelihood, she's not yet done, which means you may see more changes in the coming months.

In terms of the content, we're starting something special this month that, to my recollection, DDJ hasn't done before—launching a multiissue, multiarticle, in-depth examination of a specific topic. In this issue, our special Eclipse coverage includes four articles on various aspects of the platform—a general background by Todd Williams and Marc Erickson (no relation) examining what Eclipse is, an article by Erich Gamma and Kent Beck on how you can participate in the Eclipse Project, one by Doug Schaefer and Sebastien Marineau-Mes on the Eclipse CDT, which delivers a C/C++ IDE for Eclipse, and another by Steven Kelly on the Eclipse Modeling Framework.

We'll continue the series in the October issue with articles on the Eclipse Visual Editor for Java, a plug-in that modifies the Eclipse development environment for ease of use, and refactoring with Eclipse. We'll then wrap up the series in November by looking at how Eclipse is being used in embedded-systems development, how it is being used as a Rich-Client Platform, and what's what with EMF, the Eclipse modeling framework.

That said, DDJ's coverage of Eclipse won't go away with the November issue, however. We will continue covering the platform in subsequent months.

So what's the attraction? Simply put, Eclipse is a powerful open-source IDE built on top of a plug-in architecture. Moreover, Eclipse projects and subprojects are available under the Common Public License, which has been approved by the Open Source Initiative. This royalty-free license lets you use and redistribute Eclipse for both commercial or noncommercial purposes (for licensing details, see http://www.eclipse.org/legal/cpl-v10.html). Finally, with the recent release of Version 3.0, coverage of Eclipse is timely. The 3.0 release is a significant step forward with its focus on the development of a Rich-Client Platform, UI responsiveness, an improved user experience, and tools that go beyond Java source file manipulation.

As our Eclipse series rolls out over the coming months, I'll be curious to know what you think both in terms of the content itself and this broad, in-depth approach. If you'd like more series such as this, let us know—and don't be afraid to suggest topics you think are worth investigating.

Shifting gears, it is interesting how the definition of the term "platform" has, well, shifted. It used to be that "platform" referred to the CPU and/or operating system, as in "a computing platform is the combination of computer hardware and operating-system software that defines a particular computing environment" (http://www.geodyssey.com/tutorial/tapp.html). Along the way, the definition was stretched to include stuff such as an "infrastructure...that gives people and businesses value" (http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=57675). The first thing we knew, Java was categorized as a platform, followed by web browsers, and then IDEs such as Eclipse.

More recently, applications and APIs have moved from the realm of "interfaces" to that of "platforms." eBay, Amazon.com, PayPal, Google, and Yahoo!, among others, are referring to themselves as web-services-based "platforms" that make liberal use of the usual suspects—XML, SOAP, Java, XSLT, HTTP, and the like. In short, it seems the best way to define the word "platform" is simplest—it's anything that you build on top of.

When it's all said and done, I suppose DDJ is in this sense a special kind of development platform, too. We present algorithms, source code, and the like, and you build systems using that information. Jeez, that sounds too much like marketing. If you don't mind, I'll just continue calling DDJ what it is—a magazine, albeit a special one.