David Geary's Weblog<p>I'll scratch a hole in my life<br/>So everyone can see<p>Can of WhoopAss- April 22, 2005 I must admit it's been a while since I've written production code. Over the past couple years, my consulting has consisted mostly of training other developers. I've also been fortunate enough to contribute to some open-source projects, like Struts and Tiles, in addition to writing books and speaking on the NFJS tour. So my current consulting job, where I was able to hand-pick the technologies I wanted to use&8212;JSF, Commons Chain, Shale, Tiles, SiteMesh, Hibernate and Spring&8212;in addition..http://www.jroller.com/dgeary/entry/opening_a_can_of_whoopass Shale Adds Validation Support- April 19, 2005 JSF 1.1 doesn't explicity support client-side validation and its server-side validation is not very robust, with only three validators out of the box. Apache Commons Validator OTOH, supports both client- and server-side validation and sports a robust set of handy validators for dates, emails, URLs, regular expressions, etc. Commons Validator even has an ISBN validator, for crying out loud! But perhaps the sweetest thing about Commons Validator is that it comes with a suite of debugged...http://www.jroller.com/dgeary/entry/added_commons_validator_support_to NFJS Boston: A Wild Ride- April 17, 2005 I was sitting down to lunch before leaving for the airport last Thursday, when I suddenly realized that I didn't have my remote. As always, time was tight, so I jettisoned lunch and headed to the airport with a detour to buy a remote. I calculated what time I needed to be at the airport and it seemed as though I'd have barely enough time. Then three strange things happened: I was able to easily get to the store and find an identical replacement for my remote; I got to the airport at exactly the.http://www.jroller.com/dgeary/entry/nfjs_boston Farewell to an Old Friend- April 6, 2005 The other day my publisher told me that there won't be another printing of Graphic Java Swing. Evidently, at 1622 pages, it's too costly to print in relation to its meager sales. PH may make it available in PDF format, though. GJS had a pretty good run for a technical book, on shelves for more than 5 years with more than 100,000 copies sold. I was very lucky to hit an incredible wave of Java-induced book buying mania during the mid-late '90s. When I wrote my first Graphic Java...http://www.jroller.com/dgeary/entry/graphic_java_swing_retires Swing Sings- April 6, 2005 One of our NFJS speakers, Ben Galbraith, can't make it to the Boston show, so I'm filling in for Ben's Creating Polished Swing Applications (the session previously known as Swing Sings). It's been a long time since I wrote any Swing code and I've got 3 days to reorient myself to the client-side. Of course, I've got a 1600pg book to give me some guidance. 8-) Boston was one of my favorite stops last year. We had a big, interactive crowd. I like a lively audience because it makes things more...http://www.jroller.com/dgeary/entry/swing_sings Rails Developer Notebook- April 1, 2005 In an astonishing twist of irony, I am close to signing a contract to co-author Rails Developer Notebook for O'Reilly with Bruce Tate. As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, Bruce sent me email singing Rails' praises and before we knew it we were talking about RDN. Now I just have to learn Ruby and ROR, but as Matt Raible commented, since I'll be at least 10X as productive, I should be able to learn everything in a couple hours. 8-) I feel a little strange writing for anyone other than...http://www.jroller.com/dgeary/entry/ruby_on_rails_saga_continues Shale Cometh- April 1, 2005 Let's get something straight right off the bat: Struts is old-school and is no longer the best Java-based web application framework. IMO, it's not even in the top 3. As a Struts committer, I will always have a soft spot for Struts, but let's face it: over the past 4 years many advances have been made in WAF technology and, mostly due to backward compatibility considerations, Struts has not kept up. So this analysis of Struts is not coming from some Ruby on RailsTapestry(insert whatever...http://www.jroller.com/dgeary/entry/shale_cometh |