When you say Ruby, you say Rails. When you say Groovy, you say unit-tests, scripting and integration. Well that might be over-acted, but that’s what most people make of it.
Some people remark Scala is best-suited for backend-code, or very good at parallel code, but apart from that I’ve never heard that Scala is the language for the Lift framework. Or the language to use when you want to create multi-threaded code. What I hear mostly, Scala is the new Java.
Would that be true: could you use Scala as a dropin replacement for Java, as, let’s say, a Java 2.0 or Java 8?
In the coming postings I want to investigate that claim using my knowledge of experience in Java/J2EE and my complete lack of experience in Scala. Can you say to you’re developers, or yourself, from this day on, we’ll use Scala instead of Java to do our development?
For now, I found this nice presentation I want to share: Introduction To Scala For Java Developers by Miles Sabin.
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Posted in Technology.
Tagged with java, scala.
Google Docs is a great tool store and edit documents online. MS-Office is a pretty good tool as well. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could open documents stored at Google Doc using MS-Office. Of course MS-Office has something similar, MS Office Live, but that’s still beta and I’m more used to Google Docs. However, since recently, Google Docs integration is possible, using OffiSync!
OfficeSync is a plugin for MS-Office. After installation, you’ll get an extra menu.
Using the menu, you can open and save documents at Google Docs, in a similar fashion when you’d use MS Office Live or Sharepoint. OffiSync is free to use, but when you use the free tool, any MS Office feature that isn’t supported by Google doc is lost when you save you’re files at Google Docs. The paid version doesn’t have this disadvantage.
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Posted in Reviews.
Tagged with google.
I develop software for a living. This involves quite a lot of talking, coaching, attending meetings, drinking coffee, etc. but the actual work is done during programming – when the software is created. That programming involves repeated cycles of the following: modify or type some code, compile, deploy and then run the code and perform some tests to see if it works. How cumbersome that process was ranged from:
- Hitting ‘Run’ and waiting a few seconds,
- to hitting ‘Run and deploy’ in my IDE and waiting about 20-30 seconds,
- to executing a ant script, restarting the application server and waiting 5 minutes
- to compiling a class file, uploading the class and accompanied libraries using a cumbersome webinterface and then executing a PLSQL script to run that class, wasting in total time amount 15 minutes (yes, that was a a very big and professional company)
In my opinion, the programmer is productive when he either codes, or when he tests his codes. Any time spent on waiting or performing some troublesome actions like accessing a web interface is pure waste. In short the above time ranging from a few seconds to 15 minutes is dead time.
Of course all that time wasted not only frustrates developers, it’ll cost quite some time and thus money. Now how can you limit that dead time, that is wasted by developers? One way is your have your developers write perfect code at once. Of course that’s not very realistic. Recently I found a very nice tool to limit that dead time, when you develop Java software: JRebel. What does that mean for you as java-developer:
JRebel runs as a software agent within your virtual machine, that in turn runs your application server. What JRebel does, is taking over the class-loader.
You can specify the output directories of your IDE (target/classes, /bin, etc.). Now whenever you make a change in your code, IDE’s like Eclipse can compile that code into a new class file in the output directory. JRebel will automatically detect the changed class file. Thus no waste! Since JRebel plugs into the VM, it’ll work with virtually any application server.
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Posted in Technology.
Tagged with coder, java.
I’ve been on the Internet since 1997. I was also on Fidonet since 1995, until I got high speed internet (2Mbit shared) in 2000.
I keep all my passwords in a text document on a (hopefully) secure place and I just went to a few very old accounts to see if they’re still active. Not surprisingly, of many of them even the domain-name doesn’t work anymore:
I browsed to the first page of my saved passwords. Here are a few services for which I had an account, but that no longer work:
- Ten – as a vaguely recall, a online gaming service. Ten.com no points to some porn site, so that’s certainly not right.
- Zone – also a gaming site. Could be that site has become MSN Gaming zone, but there I can just login using my hotmail account.
- Boo – some startup, no idea what they did.
- mijn.wereld.nl – some sort of hyves, facebook, etc. in the early zero’s. I knew one of the developers, I think he also worked for WorldOnline. Domain now points to something completely different.
- Big Brother – a show that got quite popular.
- filelibrary.com – Probably a site to download drivers. No longer active.
- Napster – hopefully book publishers don’t make the same mistake as the music industry did.
- www.workspot.net – some sort of primitive Google Docs/ Dropbox as I recall.
- nytimes.com – of course that site still exist, but my login isn’t recognized anymore. Probably pointing to my university mail account.
Well these were some accounts a browsed to, fun enough. Fortunately, not all accounts registered in that time were idle: my slashdot account is still active and Slashdot is of course very much alive. Same for Yahoo. ICQ also still works, but I don’t use that anymore. Actually, Slashdot I don’t read regularly anymore either.
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Posted in Various.
From the newsletter of TheServerSide.com I received a whitepaper of Instantiations, a GUI building tool. While I haven’t read the entire paper yet, the introduction was quite intriguing;
Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) have evolved from command-line interfaces as user needs have changed. Today’s computer users require sophistication in an easy-to-use interface; most users have gotten very comfortable in a menu and mouse-driven world. Gen Xers, Gen Y’s and the Millennium generation who haven’t known a world without computers demand the total package—lightning-fast, feature-rich software with an intuitive, easy-to-use, visually attractive wrapper.
I am intrigued by the terms: Gen Xers, Gen Y’s and the Millennium generation. Apparently, these terms are now main-stream, even in the software sales industry.
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Posted in Various.
Software werd in de afgelopen decennia steeds belangrijker binnen de overheid, en bij vrijwel alle overheidsinstanties is software de kurk waarop de bureaucratie drijft. Verbazingwekkend lijken de meeste mensen bij de overheid, net als bij veel bedrijven overigens, een slecht idee van software te hebben. Overheden denken dat software iets is wat je ´bouwt´, net als kantoorgebouw, een metrolijn. Dit is een misvatting. Software, in essentie, bouw je niet, software schrijf je. Als een softwareprogramma geschreven is, kan het eindeloos verspreid worden, geïnstalleerd worden of hergebruikt worden.
Behoorlijk, als niet vrijwel alle, it-projecten van de overheden falen jammerlijk of zijn veel duurder dan verwacht. Recente voorbeelden zijn b.v. het aangiftesysteem van de overheid of de ov-chipcard. De overheid wilde software binnen een bepaalde vaste periode ‘gebouwd’ hebben, koos de goedkoopste leverancier en probeerde zoveel mogelijk de kosten gedurende het proces te laag te houden. Resultaat is keer op keer dat de overheid vele miljoenen betaald voor software, die nauwelijks zo ingewikkeld is als software die bedrijven als Google of Microsoft, of open-sourceprogrammeurs op een vrijdag-namiddag maken.
Hoe moet het maken van software dan wel gezien worden? Voor een deel is software schrijven creatief, voor een ander deel wetenschappelijk-analytisch (scientific zouden Engelsen zeggen, helaas weet ik geen goede vertaling daarvoor). Als je het maken van software al zou willen vergelijken met bouwen van huizen, dan is dat alleen het maken van het ontwerp.
Wat een junior-programmer doet is vergelijkbaar met wat in de bouw ontwerpers van leiding en electriciteitssystemen in huizen doet. Wat een senior-programmer of architect doet, is vergelijkbaar met wat een (daadwerkelijke) architect doet of projectontwikkelaar.
Als je de metafoor van bouwen zou moeten vergelijken: De gemeente Utrecht had het idee een gigantische woontoren te bouwen: de Belle van Zuyden.
Een archtictbureau heeft een ontwerp gemaakt, een projectontwikkelaar heeft een schatting van de kosten gemaakt. Na een grondige test van het bouwontwerp en -plan, en een gebruikerstest, bleek het gebouw totaal niet werkbaar. Verder ontwerp is gestopt: intekenen van de verwarming is vermoedelijk niet gedaan. 
Belle van Zuylen is niet daadwerkelijk gebouwd, ofwel het is nooit in productie gekomen.
Softwareontwikkeling is dus vergelijkbaar met ontwerpen van machines, gebouwen, en systemen in het algemeen, niet het bouwen zelf. Dat verzin ik niet ter plekke, dit wordt ook onderbouwd door meerdere mensen die er verstand van hebben. Collega’s hebben recentelijk nog een mooi artikel hierover geschreven:
Creativiteit in Software Ontwikkeling en Snel succesvolle projecten uitvoeren.
Goed boek om mee te beginnen:
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Posted in Methodology.
Tagged with agile.
A while ago a reviewed a few online storage solutions. I especially liked Zumodrive, second to Dropbox. Now I found a nice article that reviews Zumodrive and compares it to Sugarsync and Dropbox: A Review of ZumoDrive Service
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Posted in Reviews.
Tagged with cloud.
I am subscribed to several technology related newsletters, including those of InfoQ. Very often these newsletters feature very interesting content. Unfortunately, a increasingly large portion of those newsletters now includes broadcasts of presentations. With the emerge of Youtube, broadband and Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth, the trend is that information on the Internet should be in movies or sound.
That’s quite unfortunate for me. I often prefer to read something, rather then listening and watching something, at least to get information. Also, all too often I’m reading those newsletters in the occasion I can’t bother other people with sound. Well, could use a headphone – but I don’t have any 
.
I wonder if other people have that problem too?
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Posted in Various.
Ik heb een verslag geschreven over JFall 2009 voor Whitehorses, het bedrijf waarvoor ik werk.
Hier is de officiele introductie
Op 11 november 2009 werd JFall 2009, een van de twee congressen die jaarlijks door de NLJug worden georganiseerd, gehouden. Naast de inhoudelijke sessies, is een van de mooiste aspecten van JFall (en JSpring) het ontmoeten van andere Java programmeurs. In dit Whitebook vind je een verslag van dit congres en van een aantal sessies, o.a. over Java SE 7 en de nieuwe Google ontwikkelingen. Lees het volledige artikel »
en hier is de whitebook: JFall 2009, een verslag
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Posted in Reviews.
Tagged with concurrency, java, jfall.
Via the newsletter of Whitehorses, the company I work for, an article written by me is published: Gebruik de multi-core omgeving met Java 7 . As the title suggest, the article is in Dutch. The article explains some of the new features of Java 7 for creating software that runs in parallel on multiple cores.
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Posted in Technology.
Tagged with concurrency, java, jee.
