codesmell.org

i am migrating this blog to http://codesmell.wordpress.com in order to free resources on this server. Expect deep links to change.

… or as Arnie says: “i´ll be back!”

even “Chicken-Soup” can be funny.

[About cuncurrency:] My problem with the functional programming cure to this problem is that I haven’t seen a cure yet that’s better than the problem. Maybe it’s me. Maybe my tiny Ben brain just can’t comprehend the magic and majesty of OCaml, but every time I’ve tried to learn a new functional language, it’s ended [...]

Sorry to say so, but this blog is moving again. The reason is simple, I sometime would like to post in French but this would rather spoil codesmell (which is in English at 99% with a rather strong German audience). As such, I’m now sitting on joseph on IT (sorry for the name, but I’m [...]

… with a proper editor and code-completion. If you´re into eclipse and do occasional javascript and maybe jquery or <put your fav javascript lib here>, you should definitly have a look at Aptana Studio. Note, that – if you really wanted – you can also get it as a standalone editor.

a very nice introduction into mercurial can be found here. It nicely goes from bashing subversion The story is this: at some point, they tried to branch their code, usually so that the shipping version which they gave their customers can be branched off separately from the version that the developers are playing with. And [...]

can be found here. Inspiring thoughts of Prof. Dr. Miriam Meckel.

Thanks to Nathan on coderspiel, I stumbled upon this excellent article : Opinion: The unspoken truth about managing geeks. So true ! ++

hi Small post to tell that I’ve started to look into SCJD, another certification. As such, I fear I will once again post way less (in case anyone cared, which might be quite optimistic, yes I know, thanks ). Anyway, not to do a totally useless entry, let’s share a few links : a nice [...]

In order to get ready for the SCJP 6 exam, I’ve read SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 6 Study Guide, from Katherine Sierra and Bert Bates, aka some of the certification’s exam creators. The authors make clear at the beginning that the book is about, and only about, being ready for the SCJP exam. [...]

in case someone thought it was a good idea: We’re delighted to introduce a new wicket component which will allow you to easily integrate Google Waves right into your application. Please meet GoogleWavePanel ! The idea of making this component came from a recent tutorial which aimed at clarifying the use of Google’s Wave Embed [...]

I had already read some books on usability. The last one had about 400 pages and lots of texts. It laid out 10 (or 12) rules regarding usability. I can’t even remember one ! On the other hand, Steve Krug’s Don’t make me think is still deeply in my mind. Not only the author applied [...]

Wicket comes with some templating facilities. They’re often handy, especially when integrating JavaScript components. Yet, for some reasons I don’t get, these functionalities aren’t much advertised. Anyway, let’s dig in ! Basically, this templating is about some text containing variables, for example ${variable}, whose values are provided through Java code. Let’s take a simple example, [...]

If ever you face the need of ‘boxing’ the elements of a primitive array into an array of Objects, this might be handy:  Java |  copy |?  public static Object[] convertPrimitiveArray(final Object array) { final int arrayLength = Array.getLength(array); final Object[] result = (Object[]) Array.newInstance(Object.class, arrayLength); for (int i = 0; i < arrayLength; i++) { Array.set(result, i, [...]

via http://blogs.msdn.com/codeplex/archive/2010/01/22/codeplex-now-supporting-native-mercurial.aspx

We have this “fix”: Go to your workspace folder in the folder .metadata/.plugins/org.maven.ide.eclipse, remove all file ending with .container in eclipse, clear all projects hope for the best For us, it has resolved a nasty issue we had : some projects’ dependencies weren’t resolved locally even if the projects in question were in the workspace. [...]

in case you use Eclipse and like the builder pattern, try this plugin. Update Site: http://boss.bekk.no/bpep/update

very simple but neat idea by martijn dashorst: <img src=”http://example.com/images/someimage.jpg” style=”background-image:url(‘style/spinner.gif’);” /> Assuming the local machine is faster than the external server, the spinner should be visible while the external image loads. Martijn

hi I’ve recently read Test-Driven Development By Example, a book from Kent Beck. I’ve liked the following: description of the TDD cycle : Red – write a little failing test/Green – make the test pass quickly, even if it involves dirty tricks or duplication/Refactor – make the code clean, including hunting for duplicates for example. [...]

Hi ! We were some time ago at a presentation about hibernate (at a Karlsruhe JUG event). The presenter, Michael Plöd showed us a nice Hibernate statistics page. As you can bet, we went for reusing it However, in doing so, some issues appeared, and in the end we thought the updated version could be [...]

from the javadoc: Creates an image that is rendered by the Gravatar online service. Gravatars are user icons that are registered by a central server and that can be used across the internet with blogs, forums and other profile based websites. The Gravatar requires the email address for which the gravatar image needs to be [...]

Recently, on the Wicket-User mailing list: What’s the best practice when using generics with models that take some object but return another type of object? examples: When you have a collection and need to convert it to a list for listview purposes. to which mighty Igor replied:  Java |  copy |? /** * Simplifies implementing wrapper models that adapt from [...]

via http://stevelosh.com/blog/entry/2009/8/30/a-guide-to-branching-in-mercurial/ it has Branching with Clones Branching with Bookmarks Branching with Named Branches Branching Anonymously with a list of Advantages Disadvantages Comparison to git each.

via puredanger.com Doug Lea posted a note today on the concurrency-interest list that the bulk of the JDK 7 changes from JSR 166y (the second maintenance update) have been pushed in the latest JDK 7 M5 snapshots. The fork-join library provides support for fine-grained parallel divide-and-conquer style parallelism. You can think of many of the [...]

after ActiveMQ let us down the third time (rant to follow), it was time for alternatives. as i am a strong believer in OSS and the budget is tight these days, i´d love to stay in that ballpark instead of just buying SonicMQ. so looking for alternatives i came across the recent announcement of HornetQ [...]

Interpreter style can be easier than one might think. See Vassil Dichev´s Embedded Scala Interpreter

via theserverside.com: IBM WASV7 Java Persistence API (JPA) 2.0 Open Alpha once more, they repackage an apache project to charge for it. The WebSphere Application Server JPA implementation is based on Apache OpenJPA, a leading open source Java persistence framework. This alpha provides the Apache OpenJPA 2.0 implementation with IBM enhancements to benefit integration with [...]

Me again… Well, I just wanted to speak about an issue for which I didn’t find any proper answer yet. The matter is gui testing. Currently, at work, we do proper unit test for “framework level code”. By “framework code”, I mean code being in some utilities or services projects which are put there to [...]

hi The last session I was in was about Pomodoro (NB : a free pdf about Pomodoro is available on this website – I didn’t read it yet though). Well, simply put, the idea is to use a timer and then work being focused until it rings. Then one should reconsider whether he’s still making [...]

The 2nd session I went to in the Agile Tour 2009 was about testing in an Agile process. This presentation was done by Frédéric Oehl, from Smartesting. The presentation mainly consisted of 2 parts : one about tests and agility, the others about Smartesting tool for… testing. Surprising isn’t Anyway, the first part provided good [...]

hi I went yesterday to the Agile Tour 2009 event in Strasbourg. Overall, I was fearing it to be a bit dull, the program looking not so attractive. Yet I found it quite interesting and worth the time spent. Maybe low expectations helped, I don’t know, still I’m happy of this outcome. Let’s dig through [...]

will that finally make gmaps embedable in rcp apps? via MyEclipse Blog | Pulse Blog | MobiOne Blog | Genuitec Blogs. Open Source Contribution, WebKit for SWT (ver. 0.6) As strategic members of the Eclipse Foundation we enjoy giving back to the open source community when the opportunity arises. This time we’re releasing  WebKit for [...]

Have you ever prepared a certification ? Well, for me, it’s the first time, and it proves a very nice occasion to learn stuff you should never do and hopefully will never meet in real code. Still, it’s fun like hell So, what am I speaking about ? Well, stuff like these :  Java |  copy |? class ExtractsFromTheExams{ [...]

Maybe,  i´m really getting conservative with age. Writing your pom files in Groovy – a sneek preview of Maven 3′s polyglot features.