A Java geek

Jul 28, 2013

The Leprechauns of Software Engineering

This review is about The Leprechauns of Software Engineering by Laurent Bossavit, self-published Leanpub. Facts 13 chapters, $5 minimum, $10 suggestedThe book is about many things we all take for granted in software engineering, and that have no reliable underlying scientific basis Pros and cons This is not your average tech book, nor your average methodology book. As such, it cannot be reviewed through the pros/cons prism. Wrap-up Software is thought of as an engineering science: a

Jul 21, 2013 ant build gradle maven

Stop the f... about Gradle

Stop the f… about #Spring & #Hibernate migrating to #Gradle. Repeat after me: "my project do NOT have the same requirements" #Maven— Nicolas Frankel 🇺🇦🇬🇪 (@nicolas_frankel) July 16, 2013 This was my week’s hate, and I take full responsibility for every character in it. While that may seem like a troll, Twitter is not really the place to have a good-natured debate with factual arguments, so here is the follow up. Before going into full-blown rhetoric mode, let me

Jul 14, 2013 3D angularjs javascript three.js

You should check AngularJS...

... even if you’re a server-side guy! It is not because I’m a big Vaadin fan that I’m completely rejecting other technologies even before trying them. In this regard, I must stay I’ve been strongly impressed by the AngularJS talk at Devoxx France 2013. Since that time, time has definitively been too short to even think about investigating further, but now that Learning Vaadin 7 is nearing completion and that I successfully completed the MongoDB courses, I can finally do

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. In a fo

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. When you get your servlet for free, like Spring’s DispatcherServlet, you’d need to su

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. Even if you know everything there’s to know about the subject - doubtful, you will need the time to

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. When I became aware that 10gen - the company behind MongoDB, was making free online courses available at regular intervals, I jumped at the chance and last month, I registered for M101J: MongoDB f

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? When designing an architecture, there are more things to take into account than just technical para

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.