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Google has released a simple programming language called, appropriately enough, “Simple.”  The goal of Simple is to provide an easy-to-learn-and-use language for the mobile Android platform.  As a BASIC dialect, Simple is particularly well suited for non-professional programmers, but can also be used by experienced developers.  Simple enables programmers to quickly write Android applications by using components included with its runtime system.

Similar to its 1990’s relative BASIC developed by Microsoft, Simple programs consist of form definitions (which contain components) and source code (which contains the program logic).  The interaction between the components and the program logic happens through events triggered by the components.  The program logic consists of event handlers, which contain code reacting to the events.

Simple is available for Windows, Linux and Mac.  The language is open-source and includes sample applications and a tutorial.

Google warns that the Simple project is still a work in progress and likely contains bugs and missing features.  Given that the language is open source, Google encourages developers themselves to fill any gaps in functionality.

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Microsoft has enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the PC desktop for two decades.  Though the Apple operating system is superior to Windows in many ways — especially for simplicity and usability — Apple’s closed-system approach has ensured that Apple OS will never be more than a strong niche player.  Open-source Linux has made significant inroads in the server market, but the lack of singular vision and decent user-interface has kept it as a hobbyist toy on the desktop.

This has allowed Microsoft to continue to own the PC desktop, in spite of major missteps, such as Windows ME and the disaster that was Vista in its first year, with significant incompatibilities, endless security warnings, and user-defections back to Windows XP.  Microsoft’s new operating system — Windows 7, which is expected to ship later this year — has been receiving mostly positive reviews.  And not a moment too soon, because along comes Microsoft’s greatest threat to its stranglehold on the desktop in twenty years.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially target netbooks.  Later this year, Google will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.

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The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) simplifies the creation of extensible applications.  MEF offers discovery and composition capabilities that you can leverage to load application extensions.

MEF presents a simple solution for the runtime extensibility problem.  Until now, any application that wanted to support a plugin model needed to create its own infrastructure from scratch.  Those plugins would often be application-specific and could not be reused across multiple implementations.

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