Hudson Solaris SMF Manifest
May 1, 07:17 PM
I’ve been playing with the Java based Hudson Continuous Build Server and have really become a big fan of it. I created a quick and dirty SMF manifest for getting the server up and running under Solaris 10. SMF is the Solaris equivalent of UNIX init.d, Apple’s launchd, or Windows services.
(read more..)Java 5 Generics
Jan 24, 07:57 PM
I just wrote up a pretty long description of a system I developed to associate Java 5 enums with database tables at runtime. I’m looking for feedback on the method since I’m not really 100% happy with it. I recently tried to extend it by caching the Lookups in a HashMap and I got frustrated with it pretty quickly. I couldn’t seem to get the generic wildcards to play nicely with the templated methods. Since there are really no absolutes in Computer Science, when faced with a new technology I usually push it too far to see how it breaks down. The whole experience has me questioning if the complexity of the generics system in advanced usage is worth the benefits. And I know I’m not the first person to question generics
(read more..)Apple dropping the Java Cocoa Bridge?
Jul 11, 11:27 AM
Sometimes I wish when apple takes something away, they would give a clearer idea of what they are thinking. Case in point, I am really hoping that Apple has some sort of alternative in mind here and is not just dumping on Java’s parade when they say, Features added to Cocoa in Mac OS X versions later than 10.4 will not be added to the Cocoa-Java programming interface.
Huh? Really? I mean, Java programmers don’t want to learn Objective C… and didn’t Apple drop the Objective C interface to the newly free-as-in-beer WebObjects in favor of Java?
Apple has historically put Java and Cocoa together as 2 of the 3 pillars of the Apple framework stack. At the last developer convention, they pushed XCode 2.0 as the way to develop apps for the mac in the future, gunning for Codewarrior users. I really couldn’t figure out why they were going after other IDE’s other than to boost their own XCode’s market position, but I really thought that their overtures that Java “just works” were sort of a subtle nod to Java as a fully supported platform.The thing is that XCode’s Java support is really piss poor when compared against Eclipse or even Net Beans (so I’m told). And while Apple may be able to compete with a development environment that costs hundreds of dollars, I think they will only drive Eclipse users away from macs. Lots of people want to be able to use Apple kit to develop for non-apple systems. If Apple would drop a few more developers into the Eclipse foundation, perhaps they could get a little more respect from the Java community.
The only positive spin I could see from this is that perhaps they are recognizing the Eclipse/SWT platform’s momentum and are deciding not to compete there. They have already written an article about Eclipse and OSX, and Eclipse’s SWT library uses Carbon (not cocoa) so it wont be harmed by Apple’s decision here. Perhaps this is a sign of an impending rise of Eclipse’s status on OSX?
So In the end, I’m really going to hope that this is not a sign that Apple is moving away from Java… as much as “you should develop Cocoa applications using Objective-C to take advantage of existing and upcoming Cocoa features” makes me think otherwise.
(read more..)Ant Clean Timestamps Release
May 21, 08:07 PM
People who know me as a programmer, probably also know that I’m not a big fan of Apache’s Ant build system. That being said, it is probably the most common build system for Java. I had a need for an Ant task that would clean the timestamps in a source code tree and I couldn’t find one that would do the job. I wrote this little task to help me out. Hope it helps you too.
(read more..)A ruby question...
Mar 12, 05:14 PM
I have a strange attraction to new programming languages. There’s something about a new language when it is simple and clean that holds a lot of promise. Perhaps it hasn’t yet been pushed and therfore has not had to make any compromises, or perhaps when I learn a new language I overlook the details that snag me up… Either way, Ruby is my new interest.
(read more..)Previous << - >>
