Recently I have had to create several presentations related to software development to give to small groups. While I’ve had a good time doing putting them together I also wished for a pool of open source or free (as in speech) presentations to use for when I just wasn’t feeling it. I did a search on Google for links pointing to anything like that and while it did turn up a few items I wasn’t really happy with their content. So I have decided to clean up the presentations, add some speaker notes, and publish them here for people to use. They’ll be found under the Presentation page up top there.
But before I could post anything there were a couple of issues that I needed to work out.
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Chris presentations creative commons, open source, presentations
One of the things I thought might be a good idea for keeping my feet to the fire on keeping up with what is going on in the Java world is to pull some of the currently open Java Specification Requests (JSRs) down and actually read the documentation they are producing. For the most part I’m going to digest the information in the documents and just write about the interesting bits. The crappy bits will be thrown over the fence to the C
# folks (yeah, yeah like they need more crap). The goal of these “for Morons” posts is to give you the basics about a specific JSR - enough to hold a reasonable conversation about it so that you don’t sound like a moron - and to point you to where you can read or learn more if you feel like it. I’m sure I’ll toss in a dash of my own excellent opinions about the JSRs here and there too. Lucky you.
So, without any more delay let’s dive into JSR 303: Bean Validation.
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Chris java, java platform, jsr java, java bean, java platform, jsr, validation
Okay, so coupling in and of itself isn’t bad. In fact, it would be hard to imagine a modern piece of software that has progressed beyond the toy stage that doesn’t have components meaningfully coupled together. What I’m talking about is that insidious, chaotic, growing unnecessary coupling that happens so easily on a project. Seriously, when you have a dozen folks working on a code base some crazy coupling is bound to creep in there.
Coupling is the AIDS of software development. It won’t directly kill your project but it will make it easy for something else to kill it off. As coupling rises the ability of the developers to simply understand the code, make orthogonal changes, and test the thing is reduced. You can measure these symptoms as the length of time it takes to make a change, add a new feature, or fix a defect. Eventually these problems get so bad that the “One Rewrite To Rule Them All” is ordered from CEO-ron from up on corporate Mount Doom or the whole thing is simply cancelled. Both of those are generally thought of as Bad Things.
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Chris rant, software development coupling, oop, opinion, software design
I think Groovy - as a language - has potential to ease the development effort in a typical JEE development environment. There have been a ton of web pages about why Groovy is cool and I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader to follow up on. Before we get to the meat of this post I just want to be very clear that I’m a Groovy fan.
The core Groovy developers and the G2One folks are passionate, clever, and guide the growth of the language in a positive way. I have been a long time follower of the Groovy developer and user mailing list and the Groovy developers are on both lists are out there every day helping out and answering questions (often the same ones over and over and over….). These folks are very accessible to the Groovy users. I want to be clear that I’m a huge fan of all the people dedicating their time to the growth of Groovy.
But….
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Chris groovy, java, rant, software development eclipse, groovy, intellij, netbeans, plug-ins, software development, tools
This is a small cheer to myself but I got an essay on software architecture accepted over at 97 Things! Richard Monson-Haefel is heading up the project that is publishing a book through O’Reilly Media of “axioms for software architects by software architects”. I forget how I came across the website but I looked around a bit and noticed a bit of gap in the axioms so I threw one in that I think is majorly overlooked. Go me!
There is still time to get your axiom/essay in the book if you hurry.
Chris books 97 things, axiom, book, essay
Over the last ten years or so I and my family have benefited greatly from open source software. For the most part Spring and Hibernate have made the biggest direct impact on my career but there have been countless other projects too numerous to name that have helped me along the way. I have nothing but respect for those folks that work away all those hours to give away something that is useful to other people. So while I may be a bit blunt and rude here just keep in mind this paragraph.
I have been looking for a place to give back to the Java open source ecosystem for a while now. In that quest I’ve downloaded and looked over a ton of open source projects. Most of them suck when it comes to initial buy-in costs on developers who might just want to give some of their time to the project. There are a lot of us out here that would love nothing better than to help you out on your project if only trying to do so wasn’t so painful. Let’s take a look at what I’ve seen on where open source projects go wrong and start driving potential contributors away instead of attracting them. I’m also not going to name the guilty parties (after all these people are honestly working hard on their pet project too) but I will call out one that does a good job.
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Chris java, rant, software development development, java, open source, projects
The thought leaders in our industry and those of us leading software development teams on the ground are shockingly terrible at actually getting projects to a successful outcome. Depending on who you ask it would appear that as few as roughly one in four projects should be considered successful. Every one of us producing software professionally should be ashamed and embarrassed. It is unethical that we keep taking money and, for the most probable case, turn it into buggy, half working software that we force onto users. We then become insulted when such software is rightly rejected by those same users. We’ll go so far as to even project the reason the software is so crappy back on to some external factor that we have no control over (of course). What is going on here?
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Chris software development
I spend a significant amount of my time just trying to keep up in this wacky software development world. I read a couple of books a month, tons of articles on the web, and more blogs than I should probably admit to. All of these being related to producing software in some fashion. I know, I’m crazy. Anywho, I thought I’d share the podcasts I like to listen to on my 4 hour commute back and forth to work each day.
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Chris agile, java, ruby, ruby on rails, software development agile development, java, podcasting, podcasts, ruby, ruby on rails, software development
eWeek has an interesting article on Groovy’s rise in the ranks of programming languages.
“Groovy now ranks 31 on the list of top programming languages, according to Davis and data from the TIOBE Software BV. Groovy had cracked the top 100 six months ago, moving from 103 to 52, and jumped to its current position in a January poll.“
It is fantastic to see Groovy getting some real positive attention I can only hope that will spur people to more work on the Groovy Eclipse plugin. 
Chris groovy, scripting languages groovy
One of the questions one of my friends asked in a comment on another posting was, “So, if you could recommend only 1 technical book I get through this year, which one would it be?” I read way too many books. In fact, my doctor says if I don’t stop I’ll turn into a nerd. I’m willing to risk it. Anyway, I’m far from one to shrink away from such a vague and wide ranging question. These aren’t book reviews but simply a few of the reasons I think the book is pretty good or where it could be better. So in no specific order here they are…. Read more…
Chris books, software development agile, books, domain driven design, oop, software development, uml
