A Java geek

On developers' productivity

In this post, I’d like to tackle some widespread thought found in software development’s circles: the magical creatures known as 10x developers. If you’ve been working in a software development team, even for a short period of time, you probably came to the conclusion that some developers contribute more than others. I came to this conclusion already some years ago: I noticed that some developers get their tasks done more quickly, other less quickly.

Technical

My blogging stack and publishing process

I know a lot of people who have interesting things to say: when I can, I try to encourage them to write their own blogs. I think every developer who has interest should do it, with the minimal hurdle possible. However, for reasons I cannot fathom, Medium has become the blogging platform of choice. Let’s face it, while the platform is okay-ish for non-technical posts, it’s not adapted for subjects that involve code - and formatting.

Development

Even more readable code without if-else

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post focused on how to avoid sequences of if-else statements. In that post, I demo several alternatives: the usage of proper OOP designmapswhen there’s no return, switch statements in a case. Recently, I stumbled upon a slightly more complex use-case. This post describes it, and details what additional options are available in Kotlin.

Development

6 interesting features in programming languages

Java is the first language that I learned and used professionally. It has been my bread and butter for about a decade and half years. And yet, it’s not the only language I’ve learned nor used in all my years: for example, a long time ago, I’ve had to develop JavaScript code to implement a dynamic user interface. At that time, it was called DHTML… A couple of years ago, I also taught myself Kotlin, and never stopped using it.

Development

Write extension functions for your own classes in Kotlin

A recent question on Kotlin’s Reddit came to my attention lately: 'Why is it bad to write extension functions for classes that you own?' One of the answer was that it was the opposite: it’s a good practice, and for several reasons. Among them were two very important ones that improve the design of one’s code: Able to call the function on a nullable. For a class with generic types, add a function that is only available when a specific type is used.

Technical

There's no such thing as CI/CD!

Recently, I became aware of a trend that has been growing since too long: conflating CI and CD into the same word group - CI/CD. When this is done by marketers, this is business as usual, a mix of buzzwords and hype that shouts 'Look at me!'. But when this is repeated by professional software engineers, I start to worry. And this is exactly what’s happening right now.

Development

Composition over inheritance applied to Docker

This post is neither a recommendation, nor even a suggestion. It’s just me toying with an idea: Implement it at your own risk! The main benefit of Docker containers is that they are self-contained. For developers, that means one just needs to inherit from the desired Docker image that contains the necessary required dependencies, and presto, one can build one’s application deliver it to production. Most of the times, the process is pretty straightforward.

JavaEE

Easier attribute management in Java EE

Last year, I’ve been tasked to design a course and teach it to students of the 3rd year of a higher-education school in Geneva. Though I’m a Spring fan, foundations of Spring’s Web MVC take their root in Java EE e.g. servlets and filters. For this reason, I created the course on Java EE. I started my career with Java and J2EE 1.3. By reading the documentation again, I learned a few things regarding the changes since that time.

Development

Kotlin operators

Consider 2 types X and Y, and a function f defined as: class X, class Y and val f = { _:X → Y() }. In Kotlin, it’s possible to call the function f with a parameter of type X using invoke(): fun f(x: X) = Y() val y: Y = f.invoke(X()). The following calls the function f with a parameter of type X using invoke().

Nicolas Fränkel's blog