Recently, I joined a project that was already going for some time. They had chosen to use Spring Boot to deliver the project as an executable WAR. I hadn’t used Spring Boot before, but I instantly liked the idea of having the Application Server as a dependency, instead of deploying to it. It’s a bit like the way things work in the Node.js ecosystem. Continue reading
Devoxx 2013: Functional programming becoming mainstream
I was at the Devoxx-conference last week and the main conclusion for me is that functional programming is finally becoming mainstream. One of the main reasons for this is obviously Oracle finally (and long overdue) delivering project Lambda (JSR 335) in Java 8 next spring. Venkat Subramaniam of Agile Developer did an excellent, inspiring talk full of jokes on the use of Lambdas in Java. Continue reading
Weird shell script problem + solution
Yesterday, I installed a fresh Java EE application server to run a test on an application I was working on. The installation of the application server was as simple as unzipping a distribution archive. As with most application servers, the server could be started by running a shell script from the command line. This was all familiar to me, as I already had another instance of the same server installed on my MacBook. However, when I tried to run the script, I got surprised by an error message: Continue reading
Developing Java Software on a Mac: version control clients
In previous installments of this series, I’ve covered text editing, file management, command line and copy & paste. This time, I will tell you my experiences with version control clients. Fortunately, there’s quite a selection of good clients available for the Mac. Of course, every VCS has a decent command line client for the Mac, but there are some polished graphical tools as well. The only thing that I haven’t found (yet), is a client that integrates with the Mac OS Finder, comparable to what the TortoiseSVN client does with Windows Explorer. Continue reading
Which beans to use?
Andy Gibson has a very good overview article on is blog that answers exactly this question. The article covers the three types of beans we can choose of in Java EE 6 nowadays and which ones to use when. Excellent article, a must read!
Interesting stuff in JSF 2.2
Arjan Tijms wrote a nice article on what’s going on in the development of JavaServer Faces 2.2 (JSR 344). Pretty interesting stuff! I just hope we don’t have to wait for Java EE 7 to put those useful features into action…
Site moved and updated
In an effort to consolidate our family’s websites to a single hosting provider and because I was not satisfied with my previous blog hosting, I have moved my blog to a new hosting facility. In the process, I’ve also done a redesign of the entire site. Read on to learn more about the technical details…
JFall 2011
Last Wednesday, I visited JFall 2011. As expected, it was a very good conference again. I tried to tweet about some sessions I attended, but I had some weird problem with both of the Twitter-apps I have on my iPhone… So, instead I’ll give my take on those sessions here, in retrospect. Continue reading
Developing Java software on a Mac: file management
For a developer, file management is an essential task. More than the average computer user, the location and name of a file matters to a developer. Often, (sets of) files have to be copied, either on the local machine or to or from a network share. Sometimes the command line is very fast and efficient for file management tasks. However, as directory structures get more complex, I prefer a visual file management tool, as it gives me a better overview of the structure. Continue reading
Developing Java software on a Mac: text editing
For the largest part of the Java development work, I use of course an IDE. As I mentioned in the previous article in this series, the major IDEs, such as Eclipse and NetBeans, run on a Mac without problems. But apart from an IDE, a lightweight but capable stand alone text editor comes in handy quite often. Of course OS X comes with TextEdit, that is comparable to WordPad on Windows. It’s a simple word processor with the capability to edit plain text files. It can do the job, but it lacks some programming-oriented features. Continue reading