I believe that if we had glasses that could interface with any desktop, laptop, umpc, tablet, phone via say Bluetooth 3, or some future technology that is much faster, and act as a large display, it would further blur the lines of a development platform. They would need to be:

1. Fast update with no latency
2. High resolution (minimum of 800x480)
3. Allow audio to replace the current phone headsets with stereo audio (the new wave of cell phone communications), listen to music, computer feedback, etc.
4. Light weight so that it can be worn like normal eye wear
5. Be implantable in prescription glasses
6. Interface with most anything (Cell phones, laptops, tv's, dvd players, your automobile for enhanced vision/gps/backup view/etc)
7. Not obtrusive (perhaps, turn completely see through when not in use, this would be just like the bluetooth headsets that people walk around with, sticking out of their ear, when not in use)

Currently, I only do a MINIMUM amount of coding directly on my N810 as the screen real estate is too much of an impact and slows down my own progress to about 5%. Never mind the keyboard input, speed of the device, limitations of RAM, etc. My laptop is my 100% development platform as it needs to go where I go and the tablet is as stated earlier.

WHY DOESN"T THIS EXIST YET!!! I've seen glasses that exist similar to this but their adoption rate, resolution, cost are all pretty bad right now.

You can get "high res" 800x480 glasses quite easily - because that's about the same as standard-definition (i.e. low res) old-style TV, and they all do that! (PAL ~= 720x576, NTSC ~= 720x480).

Personally I need them to look like monitors in ordinary use. So minimum 1920x1200 plus peripheral vision or overlaid onto real vision, please. Preferably several times that, so it looks like a regular monitor but placed over reality at appropriate places.

That's still out of range sadly. I look every couple of years. Impressions come across that military types might have access to some portable ones at monitor resolutions, though still not quite like thin spectables, and since that's your whole field of view, it's still quite far off usable as a regular computer overlaid on daily life, though maybe good for immersive AR/VR.

I'm quite sure the App Stores and licensing fees make sense for small business software developers only for the short while that the current "there's an app for that" gold rush holds.

Then people remember again that there are many revenue models outside the scope of licensing. And with many of those Maemo Extras works just as well (or better!) than an Ovi Store would.

What application developers really need is a capable platform that is widely distributed enough to provide opportunities, but also open enough to allow experimentation with different approaches and business models. iPhone isn't that.

maybe we should the community spirit. lets all email him about the developers dream land.

Why does the title say 'essay from Paul Allen' when the essay is really from Paul Graham? Paul Allen is mentioned, once, somewhere in the article but it wasn't written by him.

Yeah, I had a brain fart there -- I knew it was Paul Graham but somehow typed Allen. I edited the post to fix it, but apparently the thread title doesn't update even if you change the post title.

Paul Graham, for anyone who doesn't know him, was one of the creators of Viaweb (which he sold to Yahoo) and now heads a sort of venture capital group that helps startups called Y Combinator. He writes a lot of interesting and often controversial essays about IT, development, startups, etc.

Regarding the NIT as dev environment: yes, the screen is less than ideal, but using a terminal or text editor on my N800 is way more plausible than it would be on an iPhone. I mostly do Java and Ruby development; the N800 doesn't run Java, of course (although I've done development on it via SSH to a server) but it's great for Ruby.

Nonetheless, I do think that the Maemo platform does, in fact, meet Graham's criteria for being exciting to developers; it may be that it just doesn't have quite enough market share (yet) to have the number of apps available take off to iPhone-like levels. Or, of course, that Graham is wrong, but I think he's got a point.

Not quite sure where you got the triple display from but I sure as heck don't - just a stonking large single screen.

A large number of developers actually use quite lower spec machines when they aren't developing for Windows boxes.

That should be a requirement across the board IMO-- it would help make software more efficient.

Did you tell him it's running Linux?

No, he's the guy that Ran Charter Communications into Chapter 11 last year.

Not to mention Digeo, Vulcan...

I think he had something to do with a Company called Microsoft, a long time ago...