There seems to be waves of online articles discussing that Java has reached its end, and in its wake are the fresh, energetic youths of dynamic languages like Python and Ruby… yeah, when I was a kid, we used to call them scripting languages, but everyone nowadays have illusions of grandeur.

But I come not to praise or to bury Java, as I completely agree with the idea of using the best tool for the job. But scripting languages, while very useful, have a sinister side. It lulls you into its easy embrace of “get something done quick” and before you know it, you’re left supporting a mountain of cards.

The other day, I was discussing some issues with a friend of mine at work, and he parenthetically commented that a particular section of code was “embarrassing.” When I asked him why, he simply said, “Have you seen that code?” At that moment, it was rather difficult to announce that I had actually written that code.

Oversight? I suppose. But XPath has long been a standard way of querying XML documents and is an integral part of XSL, however, for all of the interface work for having a standard way to parse XML documents from Java (without worrying about the actual XML parser available), there hasn’t been a standard way to issue XPath expressions without doing a parser-specific implementation.

Partly due to some experiences at work, and partly due to what I’ve been reading lately, I’ve been thinking of quality and how it relates to software development (even attempted a personal definition).

In looking over my past interaction with various software programs and systems, it is clear that some had quality and some didn’t. It wasn’t always the user interface, or the lack of bugs, it was these and more.

Often I’ll be looking at a piece of code like the following:

doc.appendChild( doc.importNode( root, true ) );

And I’ll think, “What da hell does ‘true’ mean?” In this particular case, I wrote it, but still, I expect my IDE to quickly explain all about the “importNode” method (for instance). Eclipse does this if you click on the method, and then hit the ‘F2’ key.

I like to “sigh” along with an engineer that works with me. We roll our eyes especially at Java programmers, but I’ve seen the same laziness exhibited by Perl, PHP and other scripting languages; however, it is especially noted with Java programmers.

Back in my younger days when I coded mostly in C, we had to not only manage our memory, but we had to do a lot of boundary checking and whatnot. Stack and buffer overflows were a common symptom of “programmer laziness.”

While debugging some code that traversed a DOM tree in my Java code, I noticed that the variable output wasn’t very helpful. It defaults to calling the variable object’s toString() method, which as we all know, is not always overridden in helpful ways.

To overcome this deficiency, Eclipse has a feature called “Detail Formatter” where for each class that you are debugging, you can specify how it should display. And since it executes that code snippet as if it was part of the class definition, you don’t have to worry about public vs. protected vs. private declarations.

To illustrate the concepts I mentioned in my notes on Dynamic Content with Javascript, I thought I would present an example.

This is taken from a web application that I’ve been working with a team to develop. The initial version of this page had a single text field that required the user to enter a “Target Expression” that amounted to a series of IP address ranges and information on how to access information on the machines found in the ranges.

I’ll be the first to admit that Javascript is quite painful when dealing with it. The only reason why we use it, is because it is native to most web browsers, however its most painful feature is that each browser supports it differently. But Javascript is still the best way to make a web app behave similarly to its cousin, the native client app.

In trying to make a particular dialog expand and contract with new fields based on selections by the user, I came up with a series of notes and lessons on making Javascript work on the latest crop of browsers, i.e. Firefox/Mozilla, IE, Opera and Safari.

Repeat the mantra with me, Threads are fun. Threads are safe. OK, now let’s list some of the falsehoods, gotchas and little known facts associated with threading on Java. This page is just a collection of stuff associated with threads and may not be that connected (but these notes have proved useful to me).

Yes, I really should come up with a clever name for my web publishing system. But all of the good ones are already taken.

One of the things that separated this system from blogs is the lack of an easy way to have comments associated with it. I mean, sure, comments could be appended to the end of a text file, but they couldn’t be treated specially in the template. Well, with version 1.5, they can.

Once upon a time, in an earlier age, we web geeks were individually writing our own web frameworks and template engines to solve our immediate needs. I did one and you probably did as well. When our projects were done, we felt it a shame that the rest of the world couldn’t bask in our wonderful frameworks, and so many of us donated them.

Velocity was one of those that was donated into Apache’s Jakarta project. It had a lot of merit in that it was just a template engine and could be used for more than just web pages (however, it was used as the basis for other web frameworks, such as Turbine).

I finished a project using the Spring Framework and all I can say is sweet. I’m impressed by both the simplicity as well as the flexibility and it is well known that I’ve in love with the design philosophy the spawned it.

But I thought that I would give you my favorite features/aspects, and no, I’m not going to mention transparency or inversion of control or any of the bullet items you’ll find on their web site. This is the list of the understated features…

After working for a couple of years as a 1099 consultant, I finally decided to start an LLC with a couple of peers. I actually wasn’t sure is I should do a full corporation or not, but my accountant talked me into an LLC. An LLC is like a small corporation with the limited personal liability and the ability to have the company survive the death of the founders, but it doesn’t suffer from the same tax consequences and hefty setup.

After a few forms, Opus 41 LLC was born, and I thought I would pass on the wisdom as a series of steps that you’ll need to go through to do the same thing.

I favor Courier as my mail processing system on my Linux servers. I really don’t know enough to defend it against the other solutions available, but I know it the most. That isn’t to say that I don’t swear at it…

Actually, once it is running (and you remember to run the appropriate make* command after editing a /etc/courier/ configuration file), I don’t have much complaints. My biggest problem is just building the bloody thing on any new Linux system I need. So I thought I would document my notes on getting it running on a SuSE 9.1

Yeah, I have been talking about template engines for months, and obviously, I haven’t washed this taste out of my mouth. So perhaps I just need to keep thinking aloud here.

I wanted to have an Ant task that took some files and ran them through a Perl script as a filter. Seems like a job for the apply task… give it a directory of files and a mapper to link the source files with the resulting destination files. But I ran into a snag…

Just went through a mildly painful experience trying to get Tomcat (or any daemon for that matter) to run forever, and if it dies (Tomcat sometimes does), it should be restarted. Wanted to make some notes as I tend to forget things.

Many years old, while sitting in a job interview, the interviewer asked me to describe the garbage collection algorithm for Java. I just happened to have attended a seminar on the changes in Java 1.2 the week before, and there was a lot of discussion on the changes made to the garbage collector.

Needless to say, I really impressed him, and he offered me a job.

I was reading the latest issue of Java Performance Tuning and noticed an interview with Bill Lynch and Matt Tucker, who founded Jive Software, and they make some interesting points in regards to design considerations and performance.

You can’t browse the web too long before you run into a Wiki… a group colaboration tool that allows multiple authors to work on the same page. Sounds intriguing, but it doesn’t allow for out-of-band comments between the authors, so they often just drop them inline.

So many voices talking to themselves and not to me, and only seldom glancing up to notice their audience blinking in confusion (see this example).

Had an interview with a company where someone asked me what was the latest book that has inspired me. A very good interview question, but a particularly interesting question for me since I haven’t been inspired (in a technological way) for a very long time.

Funny, but I didn’t feel right about mentioning the owner’s manual to Mac OS X (or the lack thereof).

The other evening, a friend of mine starting bitching about Java. It isn’t too difficult to do, especially now. He is a highly intelligent individual who can talk about the database theory as well as program firewall table rules… but building things is Java is frustrating.

I’ve hesitated calling my web site and what “I do” a blog. I mean, I’ve been doing this thing years before the term came into being, and like others, I too am long on words and short on links to be considered a true weblog (read my article, Why I Write). But I just read Robert Cringley’s perspective on the subject of blogs, and wanted to elaborate on it.

By far, Struts is the most popular web framework in the Java world. I’ve noticed that it is now popular enough that recruiters and IT managers are mentioning it by name. In fact, one recruiter said that he was looking for someone with 5 years of professional experience with Struts… I just had to laugh.

Struts has it own list of good points, but I have a couple of issues with it. What I would like is to dive into the internals to see if I can’t fix some of them. So, don’t mind me, but I’m going to ramble on about what I’m not fond of…

You may have noticed that on the right side of my web site is a blurb about what I am listening to (yeah, I mentioned this before). Anyway, playing anything from another country would result in garbage on the screen. Thought I would mention what the hell I go through for stoopid scripts.

HAL-9000, that intelligent computer from 2001: A Space Odessy, kills its creators. I sometimes wonder if we software engineers don’t do the same. Think about it… our goal is to have software systems so automated and efficient that its creator becomes unnecessary. We tend to program ourselves out of a job.

As I mentioned before, I eschewed using a large web framework solution and instead wrote simple servlets that used a small template engine. I thought I would describe some of my feelings on template engines in general and Freemarker in specific.

Allow me to continue on with some of my musings on my recent project. Like I said last time, my last project was as much an experiment as it was a deliverable to the customer— especially when it came down to deciding on a web framework. You see, I didn’t want to use one.

After using and playing with just about every web framework engine under multiple languages, I’ve become pretty disillusioned… in the name of “separation of concerns” (following the MVC design pattern), in order to fix a bug, you now have to edit or look at five Java source files, three web pages, and four configuration files… how did that help me?

The last couple of years of server-side architecture has left me with a pretty bad taste in my mouth, and I’ve just got to spit… However, I have a suspicion that some of my ideas may be seen as heretical, so allow me to protect myself from the pyre by stating that the following idea is not a global truth, but a wakening shake for all of us to realize that not everything is a pattern from our last project.

Allow me to get concrete by talking a bit about my last project… which was as much an experiment as it was a deliverable to the customer…

When I first got my Mac, I made a list of the software that I was using … of course, that list is old as some of the software just didn’t make the grade over time. So maybe it is time for me to revise my list.

As I sit in my den busily working on my latest project, a little tuft of hair in ponytails bounds around my desk. By the time the hair has reached the end of my desk, it has grown downward into my little two-year old, “Hi Daddy. You wookin on you com’pootah?”

Does anybody really use that Keyword field in MovableType for the intent it was made? I didn’t, however, I do like the concept of being able to add some meta information to my blog entries that I can then do clever things with.

I first ran across this meme on Adriaan’s web site of people publishing pictures of their workspace … that is, the area where they make their work, make their web site, and execute their creative ideas. What the hell, it might make reveal more of my blogging persona.

Of course, this got me thinking… should I clean up and represent my workspace as is, or how I want it to be? I’ve been working on my taxes, and I’ve had lots of receipts and papers strewn around the room like the aftermath of a small tornado. Well, alright, I won’t clean, but I just might tidy things up by stacking those papers… effectively spell-checking my environment.

Just finished a zingy little article in the latest edition of the Utne Reader entitled, What Your Favorite Album Says About You (by Christian Finnegan, from the Summer 2003 issue of Jest). It begins…

It is said that one should never judge a book by its cover. That seems like sound logic, but what about album covers? A Celine Dion album, for instance, that someone tells you is there favorite? I think it’s safe to say that you have every right to judge that album and, moreover, the person who enjoys it.

Every time I get a new computer, I rewrite an application to remind myself to take a break every 20 minutes. You see, I suffer from eye strain from concentrating on the tiny little letters glowing on this monitor. This unnatural situation really affects my vision, so I try to take a 30 second break every 20 minutes or so.

But who can remember something that when you are busy debugging some cryptic error message?

Just read John Dvorak’s op-ed piece in PCMagazine, Co-opting the Future, in which he makes some interesting stats on the demise of blogs… well, not the demise, exactly, but there is definitely a slow-down. We all knew it was a fad, didn’t we? But after the hype, a “good thing” generally settles down to an acceptable level of usage.

Anyway, the article inspired me enough to write this … and any excuse to talk about me and my website.

After running into a strange problem with suddenly not being able to post to my Movable Type server, I noticed in MT’s support forums that the culprit is not uncommon. The ability to work with a blog varies, but one symptom is common… a few innocuous error lines at the end of MT’s pages.

Well, I changed my mind. I’ve relaxed my copyright licensing for the original content on my website and placed it under a Creative Commons license model. Why?

I’ve been running my own servers for years and I do it for a couple of reasons … first, it is fun setting them up, and second it allows me to install and use any sorts of programs I’d like without having to talk a system administrator into it.

Of course, there is the downside … I have to be the system administrator.

What’s up with the plethora of APIs for doing web services? When SOAP was first invented, I played with it, but not having an immediate need for the technology, I didn’t stay with it. Well, now I do, but I’ve been having trouble making heads or tails of all the latest specifications for working in this medium.

Just read John Gruber’s article entitled Good Times which has a section about how most people buy computers based on what their “closest nerd friend” recommends. He’s on to something. Granted, I still think that the number one reason why people choose a computer system is based on the applications it has. But when your “application needs” consist of web/email/letters, just about any computer will do.

Once upon a time, i had a hard time recommending anything … I was into Linux, and its desktop and lack of apps surely didn’t lend itself to setting my Grandmother up on the ‘net. Now things have changed …

Just read an article about the current complex state of affairs in the J2EE world. One of the comments to it seems to resonate among a lot of Java developers:

“J2EE is a great solution for a problem no one actually has. I can’t wait for something (anything) else to arrive that makes programming the simple, fun affair it was in the good ‘ol days.” —David Zimmel

So my servers are located in another room to insulate me from the noise and the visual disturbance. I know I worked on computers, but is there anything more ugly than a cheap PC? Anyway, I seldom have to physically touch them because they are servers and I access them remotely from my workstation.

Today we had a little bar-be-que in honor of my daughter's second birthday, and I got to talking with some friends, and I said that "blogs have become quite faddish..." I know that with the exception of the political climate, the next favorite blog topic is … well blogs, and most bloggers would not appreciate my description of this sensation as a fad.

I just realized something today … my Mac depends on Perl. I mean, in a way, it just boggles the mind. Perl seems to be the exact antithesis of the Way … the Mac Way anyway.

The problem with marketing hype in the high-tech industry is that little can live up to such high expectations. A number of good ideas seem to be forgotten purely because of a lack of understanding of what the idea may have been actually good for. One of my personal favorites is Jini.

While this is a long threaded discussion, but it has some interesting ideas. Basically, people are suggesting that with the economy as it is, Apple should release a cheap computer solution without a monitor that would allow someone to pick it up for about the same price as a PC. However, this particular subthread suggested that $800 is not the true cost of a PC … you must factor in things like your time and effort to integrate everything … as well as the cost of getting the equivalent software.

You may remember those commercials of yesteryear where they shampooed (is that how you spell that word?) someone's head, but used two different shampoos (one on each side). The person then responds that he/she likes the side that is "tingly" that way, "I know it is working."

Talk about an effective ad campaign to cover up a product's defect.

A friend of mine sent me an email asking me what I thought about my Treo270, and I realized that I never did give a "few months perspective" on this gadget, so here it is …

This is both good news and bad news. Good news because it supports a Journaling File System (see article here or see Apple's Server Site for details).

But this is also bad because now I have to do an upgrade of the operating system that … well, frankly scares me. I guess I don't have too much invested in my OS instantiation so I won't bother to backup.

Now that I've made the switch, I wanted to start listing of Macintosh related web sites that appeal to me. Specifically ones on OSX (pronounced oh-ess-ten I understand ). Here is a list of general web sites that are useful:

I did it. I made the switch … I bought a Macintosh today. Specifically, a Power G4 with dual 1Gig. I upgraded the memory and the hard drive (they had some specials), and now I am waiting for it to ship. I suppose I could have gone down to a store to pick it up, but since my basement isn't completely finished yet, I figured that I could wait a few days.

Here is an interesting idea from Doc Searls:

Give every journalist in the whole AOL/Time Warner organization a blog. Control nothing. Just let 'em go and let nature take its course.

I guess that if everyone could easily publish as well as consume, a search engine could represent popular opinion. Well, weblogging is poised to make it just that easy. Not quite there yet, but getting there.

A feature built into most web browsers is that the browser will tell the server of a web page what web page sent it. A sort of, "Who told you to come see me" sort of interrogation. This is called a referer (sic), and it is used for web authors to see who is linking to them and how people meander through their web sites.

One of the more interesting side-effects of this feature, is that search engines like Google will embed the "search query" that the person used in order to find a page in this "referer" system.

I've been writing on this web page since '97 … but I didn't write very often way back then. I guess I waited until I really had something to say. Now that I'm using a online journaling system (a blogger engine), I write a lot more often.

I'm not sure if I write better … but it is more often.

The back-end to this site is a "weblog engine" (specifically, Movable Type). The concept of "weblog" or online journaling has a lot of potential... potential outside of world of "personal expression" and web pages.

While elsewhere I have debated the merits of weblogging vs. other forms of communication, here is a couple of interesting blogger-related web articles:

http://www.chymes.org/hyper/weblogs.html
http://www.bizstone.com/Essays/problog.html
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,52380,00.html
http://interactiveu.berkeley.edu:8000/CA/discuss/Weblogging

While reading the journal of Bashô, a seventeenth century, Japanese poet, I found the following quote on journals, that I thought I would transcribe into my own.

I've been bloggin' in a general sense for many years … at least since '97. But I wasn't using any sort of engine. I would just write down some of my thoughts and email them to my friends. I originally called them Tea Thoughts as I still attribute tea to some magically properties that seemed to invoke … well, thoughts.

The other day, my sister sent me a nice email with a question. Well, I responded with the answer and hit the "Send" button before I had realized that I didn't even ask how she was doing or what was going on in her life. Where were my manners?