Java: Near to the Barking SealsJava development, J2EE, IDEs, XML, SOAP, toolsSaying Something Bad about Groovy (Minor Nits)- December 30, 2003 I'll take up Dave Johnson's request for someone to say something bad about Groovy, the new Java-based scripting language.I've been trying to email this to James, but it keeps bouncing. I'm really happy that the Groovy team is now making releases, with Groovy 1.0b1 as the first. I noticed a problem, though, on the Quick Start Page. The first line of the first example fails because the interpreter does not understand the Date class. That is, the...http://www.jroller.com/ericfj/entry/html_head_head_body_i1 Cool Things: Jodd Utility Library- December 30, 2003 I've been using Jodd for some time now, mostly as a layer on top of JDBC, and I continue to be impressed by the quality of this library. Jodd is a Java utility library that includes bean utilities, string formatting, very useful date and time utilities, and even a small MVC framework for Web applications, along with database utilities.For database access, Jodd includes a connection pool mechanism that just works, along with a SqlUtil class that...http://www.jroller.com/ericfj/entry/cool_things_jodd_utility_library Three Warning Signs Your Build May Be Too Complex- December 1, 2003 I just started on a new project and got a chance to see the project's build environment, which inspired me to write this entry. This project is doing some pretty neat things and uses XDoclet, so it is buzzword compliant. The setup instructions seemed way to complex, though. This made me focus on three warning signs that a build environment is too complex. These signs include: Developers must set environment variables before building. Developers must.http://www.jroller.com/ericfj/entry/html_head_head_body_i Getting Started With Eclipse- December 1, 2003 A few notes to quickly get started with the Eclipse IDE. I get a lot of questions on this subject as more and more of my co-workers switch to Eclipse.Download and Extract - Dowload the latest released version from eclipse.org for your platform. Eclipse releases are ZIP files. Extract the ZIP archive into an empty directory. The ZIP file will make a subdirectory named eclipse. Install Plugins - Eclipse comes with many neat features. The IDE is also ...http://www.jroller.com/ericfj/entry/getting_started_with_eclipse How Not To Design an API - II- December 1, 2003 Another project at a client site revealed a surprising and very bad practice. Never name a class the same as the interface it implement s. The main problem here is not that this is incorrect. If each type is in a separate package, you can resuse the name. It means, though, that within your Java code, you have to use the fully-qualified name to remove any ambiguity for the compiler. The problem lies instead in confusion. Unless you always use...http://www.jroller.com/ericfj/entry/how_not_to_design_an1 Moving to Linux For Java Development- December 1, 2003 I've used Linux for development for many years, but never full time. At supergloo, I have the opportunity to come up with a 100 percent Linux development environment and it is working great.I have a long background in cross-platform development (which has been one of the appeals of using Java). So, I tend to focus on cross-platform tools. This helps me on those rare occasions when I do need to go back to Windows. For coding, I use the Eclipse Integrated...http://www.jroller.com/ericfj/entry/moving_to_linux_for_java |