You can’t really question the inertia behind enterprise development using POJO’s and lightweight frameworks. Rod Johnson (of Spring framework fame) wrote the book about this approach, effectively putting the last nail in the heavy framework’s coffin. This morning’s presentation by JBoss covered their take on this from a 5000-ft level and also described some of the new things afoot in v5 of JBoss AS.
JBoss is mutating their MicroKernel (heavily JMX based) into what they call the MicroContainer. The MicroContainer architecture could be described by reading the outline of Spring’s core container and subtituting “Spring” for “JBoss”. Indeed, they are not only building a lightweight DI framework; they are building their entire app server on it. Cool.
JBoss has always been good about letting the developer/integrater customize the footprint of the server through configuration. It looks like this is going to be even cleaner and better in v5, since the same DI engine which builds the server innerworkings can also assemble application components — all the way up through the presentation tier using Seam/JSF.
Well I’m in Vegas for the 2006 JBoss World expo. I just ran into Marc Fleury in the elevator and he was wearing his Red Hat Fedora. It’s going to be an interesting week.
I have been conducting interviews with Mid/Senior level Java developers, and I have learned some interesting facts about the language that I did not know.
- If you use “==” to compare two objects such as Strings, your code will not compile.
- The difference between a checked exception and and unchecked on is that you must handle a checked exception and you cannot handle an unchecked one.
- Omitting the access control modifier from a method reverts to the default access control which is the same as protected.
- To pass information from a Struts Action to a JSP, you set it in the response.
- In an MVC architecture, such as Struts, the JSP’s represent the model.
Guys, if you are going to interview for a programming job, brush up on the fundamentals! May I suggest a certification or two; perhaps a black belt?
Updated 5/32/2006 -CB
The dev shop I manage really has no choice but to be agile. With lightning-fast changes in priorities, there’s no room for wholesale planning beyong a couple weeks out. What’s missing, however, are the tools to make this all work.
Sure we do the best we can with JIRA (a fantastic traditional bug tracker) and MS Project (a not-so-fantastic project management tool), but there doesn’t seem to be a good selection of tools to mimick an agile team.
I want creamy visual objects that represent features which can be moved between developers. I want a view of each developer’s workload for the next week, month and year. I want to know in 10sec what’s going out when, and which tasks are the limiting factor.
The closest thing I’ve found is VersionOne, and I haven’t had a chance to fully evaluate it yet. If anyone has any clues, I’m all ears.
I finally got a little time last night to check out Ruby on Rails. I have been hearing the hype now for over a year and I was pretty certain it would live up, and I’m here to tell you that it does. As a J2EE developer I respect OO design and and well thought-out conventions. Ruby embraces both and delivers a slick little setup that lets you get a data-connected webapp running in minutes.
The nice part is that with one install, you get the Ruby language along with Gems, the package manager. Gems works a lot like Yum does for linux, and with one gem command, you get the complete rails package, including a little webserver called WEBrick. RoR passes the 10-minute test with flying colors.
I followed along with one of the recommended tutorials before I hit the sack, and I found myself lying in bed running through use cases for my new score. Damn I’m a geek.