A Java geek

Jul 7, 2013 maven

Maven between different environments

As a consultant, I find myself in different environments in need of different configurations. One such configuration is about the Maven settings file. This file is very important, for it governs such things as servers, mirrors and proxies. When you have a laptop, switching from customer configuration to home configuration and vice versa when you change place quickly becomes a bore. When you have to handle more than one customer, it escalates a nightmarish and tangled configuration mess.

Jun 23, 2013 integration testing spring spring mvc

Spring 3.2 sweetness

Even the most extreme Spring opponents have to admit it is all about making developers life easier. Version 3.2 of Spring MVC brings even more sweetness to the table. Sweetness #1: No web.xml The ability to run a webapp without any web deployment descriptor comes from Servlet 3.0. One option would be to annotate your servlet with the @WebServlet annotation to set mapping and complementary data.

Jun 20, 2013 writing

Writing a tech book: why and how?

There are a couple of reasons that could motivate you to write a tech book. Money shouldn’t be one of them. You don’t get rich, period First things first, you don’t write a technical book to become rich as you need the lower time to revenue ratio possible. In this regard, technical book writing is one on the worst possible example: It is a very time consuming activity.

Jun 16, 2013 course mongodb nosql

MongoDB course, thoughts and feedback

I’m afraid I traded my ability to understand SQL for the ability to understand Object-Oriented Programming a long time ago. That’s why I never have been at ease with databases in general and SQL in particular. Given the not-so-recent trend about NoSQL, I thought it was time to give it a try.

Jun 9, 2013 architecture

There is no such thing as an absolute best architecture

I’ve been surprised this week by a colleague’s comment regarding how a piece of software had been architectured. He found it too much procedural and not enough object-oriented, despite the fact the code was performing exactly as needed. I would have expected this from a junior developer, not from a seasoned one. Hey, guys, may I kindly remind you we’re not in university anymore?

Jun 2, 2013 spring

Modularity in Spring configuration

The following goes into more detail what I already ranted about in one of my previous post. In legacy Spring applications I’ve to develop new features in, I regularly stumble upon a big hindrance that slows down my integration-testing effort. This hindrance, and I’ll go as far as naming it an anti-pattern, is to put every bean in the same configuration file (either in XML or in Java).

May 12, 2013

The next Gutenberg moment is now

Some time ago, I stumbled upon the term 'Gutenberg moment' (and I’m very sorry because I don’t remember where). I googled it quickly and here’s a definition I found: a Gutenberg moment is one which changes the way we produce and consume text as dramatically as Gutenberg’s machine did.

May 5, 2013 automation deployment

Deployit, deployment automation made easy

Two weeks ago, I attended the first Swiss JDuchess workshop in Geneva. It was about Deployit, a software to enable continuous deployment. I had already been introduced to it at Devoxx France 2012, and it had been a surprise… a very good one. Unfortunately, the workshop was a failure, at least for me: I couldn’t import the provided Virtual Machine. Given the very positive feedback of the other attendees, I decided to run it some time later at home.

Apr 28, 2013 integration testing test unit testing

Integration tests from the trenches

This post is the written form of one of my submission for Devoxx France 2013. As it was only chosen as backup, I lacked the necessary motivation to prepare it. The subject is important though, so I finally decided to write it down. In 2013, if you’re a standard developer, it is practically a given that you test your code. Whether you’re a practicioner of TDD or just create them afterwards, most realize a robust automated test harness is not optional but mandatory.

Apr 21, 2013 bean validation

Design by contract and bean validation

I must confess that despite all benefits of defensive programming, I usually limit myself to not expose mutable attribute to the outside world. Why is that? I believe this is mostly because of readability. Have a look at the following piece of code.