Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays from Hacker's Valhalla!

If you were expecting content, Spring Framework 3.2 is released (TheServerSide).

"An Upgrade Without Downtime"

Over at Udi Dhan is a summary post about Dennis van der Stelt's blog on how using a publish/subscribe model and large buffers allowed for power-cycling critical infrastructure without affecting the overall system performance.

It's the first time I've read something about software development and genuinely thought "epic".

Blog News and Regexes

For regular readers you may have noticed that there's been a lull in postings; I've had a combination of work and health issues that have taken their toll. Such is the fate of one man blogs!

The Server Side has an article on regexes; regexes (i.e. regular expressions) are one of those things that you need a lot of refreshers on (or need to read a lot to get!).

Something Important Happened

I just caught on the eetimes that there is a new software engineering certification.  What makes this a big deal is that it's by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, something that has an actual track record.

The test info is also on their site, look for "Software" in the list.  As the recent spat on Yahoo's CEO demonstrated, there isn't currently an equivalent of the engineering certifications in software.  This may change that.

This may prove to be pivotal for the field of Software Engineering / Programming / Whatever we call it.

NOW I Get It: Aspect Oriented Programming

After going through the Aspect related chapter of Spring in Action the concept of Aspects finally "clicked" for me.  This is after reading the Wikipedia on it, the Spring documentation and various other articles as well.

To summarize:

• Some things (like logging) need to be executed everywhere, even in modules who's primary purpose isn't logging.  Aspects address this issue.
• An Aspect is just a bit of code (with Spring it can even be a POJO) that is configured (typically with an annotation or XML) to run before, after, or around a join point (for now, assume it's a fancy word for method).
• For the canonical example of logging, you can create an aspect to log something like "Calling method x with parameters x, y and z" before a method runs and "Returning from method x with return value y" afterwards.  
• This separates the logged class from the logging system entirely and results in a second class logging the first one.  
• If you want logging statements in the middle of a method, too bad, refactor to call a helper method (thus creating a new join point) and log there.

Hopefully presenting the gist of it with concrete examples will help everyone's understanding.

Gower's Law

Gower's Law: You can deliver a broken build in near-zero time.

(PS: thedailywtf article in the above link is gold)

This was inspired both by Peopleware (where they mention that when there is a tight schedule quality usually suffers) and my own experience in the work force.

Review: Force Trainer

I know, I know, I'm a bit late to do a review of the Force Trainer since it came out around late 2009 (Gizmodo review).  However, only now did the price come down enough for me to try it out as I put it into the category: "interesting but is it really useful?"

If you're even later to the party than I am, the Force Trainer is one of the first generation of consumer-grade Mind Machine Interface, and like many other technologies is somewhat expensive (Amazon price is at ~35 USD instead of the original 129), somewhat difficult to set up (initial calibration is frusterating) and somewhat unreliable (or maybe I'm just not the Jedi I used to be).  In case you missed the subtext, yes, IT READS YOUR MIND (or more correctly reads your brain waves).

I've had it (so far) for about two days now and find it a much better concentration aid so far than guided meditation CDs or simple silence (without feedback, how will I know if I'm concentrating correctly?)

All in all, a decent buy at $35, just to have something that reads your mind (this technology will only get better and more prevalent as time goes on, so you may as well get used to it now).

Also, if electronics is your thing, there's a hack to link the input into a serial port.  You could technically adjust your dimmer lights with your thoughts via consumer technology.


I'm really starting to dig the 21st century!