A Java geek

Scala vs Kotlin: Multiple Inheritance and the Diamond problem

This is the 4th post in the Scala vs. Kotlin focus series. Inheritance is one of the basic tenet of Object-Oriented Programming, along with encapsulation and polymorphism. Alongside simple inheritance, there is multiple inheritance: feature of some object-oriented computer programming languages in which an object or class can inherit characteristics and features from more than one parent object or parent class.

Technical

Managing publications with Jekyll

Some time ago, I migrated my WordPress blog to Jekyll for different reasons including performance, security, and hosting costs - but mainly because I lost too much time maintaining the platform and the plugins up-to-date. So far, I’m very happy about the result. But I had to change the way I’m writing posts I intend to publish later. In WordPress, the process is very simple: write a draft anytime you want; edit it to your heart’s content and when ready, hit publish. Done.

Technical

A SonarQube plugin for Kotlin - Creating the plugin proper

This is the 3rd post in a series about creating a SonarQube plugin for the Kotlin language: The first post was about creating the parsing code itself.The 2nd post detailed how to use the parsing code to check for two rules. In this final post, we will be creating the plugin proper using the code of the 2 previous posts.

Technical

A SonarQube plugin for Kotlin - Analyzing with ANTLR

Last week, we used ANTLR to generate a library to be able to analyze Kotlin code. It’s time to use the generated API to check for specific patterns. API overview Let’s start by having a look at the generated API: KotlinLexer: Executes lexical analysis.KotlinParser: Wraps classes representing all Kotlin tokens, and handles parsing errors.KotlinParserVisitor: Contract for implementing the Visitor pattern on Kotlin code.

Technical

A SonarQube plugin for Kotlin - Paving the way

Since I started my journey into Kotlin, I wanted to use the same libraries and tools I use in Java. For libraries - Spring Boot, Mockito, etc., it’s straightforward as Kotlin is 100% interoperable with Java. For tools, well, it depends. For example, Jenkins works flawlessly, while SonarQube lacks a dedicated plugin. The SonarSource team has limited resources: Kotlin, though on the rise - and even more so since Google I/O 17, is not in their pipe.

Miscellaneous

It depends

In the industry, there’s this widespread joke. Whatever the question you ask a consultant, the answer will be: It depends. This joke is meant to highlight that consultants never give a straight answer to a simple question, because they don’t want to take any responsibility. While I understand the frustration of the business when faced with this situation, I’d like to write about the other side of the fence.

Java

What archive format should you use, WAR or JAR?

Some time ago, RAM and disk space were scarce resources. At that time, the widespread strategy was to host different applications onto the same platform. That was the golden age of the application server. I wrote in an earlier post that the current tendency toward cheaper resources will make it obsolete, in the short or long term. However, a technology trend might bring it back in favor.

Java

Why are you testing your software?

15 years ago, automated tests didn’t exist in the Java ecosystem. One had to build the application and painfully test it manually by using it. I was later introduced to the practice of adding a main method to every class and putting some testing code there. That was only marginally better, as it still required to manually run the methods. Then came JUnit, the reference unit testing framework in Java which brought test execution automation.

Java

Concurrency: Java Futures and Kotlin Coroutines

A long time ago, one had to manually start new threads when wanting to run code concurrently in Java. Not only was this hard to write, it was easy to introduce bugs that were hard to find. Testing, reading and maintaining such code was no walk in the park either. Since that time - and with a little incentive coming from multi-core machines, the Java API has evolved to make developing concurrent code easier.

Nicolas Fränkel's blog