A Java geek

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.