I finally got the first release of FXRuby version 1.4 out the door this past weekend. It’s quite a relief to get this one out of the way. FOX 1.4 was released way back in February, and so this release has taken some six months to put together.

One of the primary reasons for the delay was that I wanted to make sure that the first release was in really good shape and mostly complete. In the past, I’ve been bitten by the “release early, release often” approach to software development. For this release, I wanted to do as much as possible to make sure that all of the new classes were supported, documented and tested before it hit 1.4.0, and I think I did a good job with that. So far there have been very few bug reports, and only about minor problems.

It’s coming up on four years since the first FXRuby release and I’m pleased that the project’s still going strong. The open source software landscape is littered with projects that were started by eager, well-meaning folks, only to be abandoned months later (or even sooner). Based on discussions with Jeroen, it sounds like a FOX 1.6 release is imminent, and so I’ve already begun work on the next major release of FXRuby. No six month delays this time!

Yesterday (was it just yesterday?) Google announced the beta release of Google Talk, their instant messaging service. Actually, there’s more to it than just IM; it also does Voice over IP (VoIP), which I’ve been meaning to look into for a while now.

I’m trying to get excited about this. I’m a fan of Google and especially some of their other services (like Gmail and Google Maps). But for some reason, I never got into the IM habit, and as far as I know, none of my friends are really into it either. Is this a generational thing? It seems like its mostly younger people (where I of course define “young” as “under the age of 30″) who are really leading the way on this.