Two years have passed since the release of Vim 7.2, and today version 7.3 is here with a few improvements, but nothing major.  Vim has remained a consistently solid editor with little need for more features.  However, this release does feature new interfaces for Lua, Python 3, and conceal text.  There is also a new persistent undo, an undo for reload, and Blowfish encryption.HTML5 Rocks On

Extreme programming sounds a little too "ESPN2" for most managers, but there is a lot of sound engineering behind its principles. In this presentation, recorded at Oredev 2009, Neal Ford talks about the parts of XP that are absolutely vital and the ones that you can introduce a little more slowly (pair programming, only a 40 hour work week). He also talks about political battles...

Like most Java developers, I feel disappointed in the lawsuit that Oracle has brought up against Google.  With Android, Java had become a key technology for mobile application development. Contrasting Android to JavaME makes you appreciate what Google had done for Java developers. JavaME may have been installed on a lot of phones, but it wasn't nearly as accessible or feature rich as Android is....

I have been thinking about providing an additional way of specifying test suites for TestNG for a while. The current format is XML, which has quite a few benefits, but no matter how hard you try to specify an XML file to make it as concise as possible, the end result will always end up being more verbose than you’d really like, especially if that format grows organically throughout the...

Converting JavaBeans to XML and viceversa is quite a common task, and there are tons of libraries around for this purpose. But I always like to use what is already available in the JRE, avoiding dependencies as much as possible. In the past I and Simone developed a rest API using the JSR57 serialization, that was already available in the Java 5. James Sugrue...

For whatever reason, I have seen the topic of unit tests appear in my daily reading frequently the past few days. Because I am in that kind of mood, I wanted to rant on unit testing. First, let’s look at some of the articles that caught my attention. One article talks more about the psychology of unit testing and starts with an interesting paragraph: ...

In a statement sent out to the media late last week, Google announced its intentions to defend open source and protect Android (and the Dalvik JVM) against the "baseless" suit that Oracle has brought against it.  Google has called Oracle's infringement case an "attack" against both themselves, and the open source Java community.  Google says it will "strongly defend...

For the seven months that Oracle has owned Sun's technological assets, they have welcome contributions and roadmaps for their inherited open source projects.  However, the company has also made several crucial missteps in its handling of OSS projects and their respective communities.  Given their bureaucratic PR process and virtual radio-silence on some issues.  Here are the top five...

Welcome to episode six of The Agile Guerilla series. The focus of this series of articles is to to help you introduce change, specifically moving to agility, into your organization from the grassroots level.

A little tip that can be useful and save a lot of time : Do not use relative path with LogBack. I wondered why this little LogBack configuration didn’t work :

A blogger has leaked what is believed to be an internal Oracle memo about the future of OpenSolaris and Solaris 11.  The key quote from the memo states: "We will not release any other binary distributions, such as nightly or bi-weekly builds of Solaris binaries, or an OpenSolaris 2010.05 or later distribution.

Oracle's lawsuit against Google's use of Java-related patents in Android's Dalvik VM and SDK could become a drawn out battle with long lasting implications.  The immediate effect has been mainly a negative outcry from the Java community.  The documents that Oracle released don't go into enough detail for Java and OSS experts to make a clear prediction on what the outcome will be.  Google can't...

In this article we will see how Hibernate provides built-in types that map to common database types. We'll also see how Hibernate allows us to implement and use custom types when these built-in types do not satisfy the application's requirements, or when we want to change the default behavior of a built-in type. As you will see, you can easily implement a custom-type class and then use it in...

Well, I suppose I didn’t tell you so, I didn’t knock on every Java developer’s door and say it. But I did say it. To myself. In a soft mumble. LOL. What I said is that Java is not any more “Open Source” than .NET is. Granted, a huge majority of the open source community such as the gobs and gobs of projects that have been hosted for like ever at http://sourceforge.net/ are...

Why bother with having standards for builds? Do we need generic conventions for compiling, packaging and versioning? No need. Should you roll your own? What do we need from a build tool? What functions does it provide? Should it be all encompassing big brother or a transparent minion waiting at our beck and call? This is the first in a multi-part series on how and why we use build tools and the...

In part 1, we looked at the basic structure and configuration of the project that is common in all the archetypes. This time we’ll look at the minimal archetype that contains some more functionality and a number of different classes used to implement that functionality. The Java EE 6 Minimal Archetype While there is still only one web page in the project, there are now a few more classes...

I am disappointed with many of the newer languages which I earlier thought showed great promise of making programming easier, quicker, and more robust. And it boils down to one thing. Simplicity in learning. Having gone through substantial amounts of programming in C, C++, Java and Python, my quest for the “next” programming language remains unfulfilled. Why ? ...

Oracle is suing Google over Java. I’m really curious to see what legal ground Oracle is going to be using considering that Sun’s previous CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, officially congratulated Google the day they announced Android: James Sugrue

Philosophy and economics have something to say about Unit Testing. There are two schools of thought about whether programmers should have to write tests to verify their own code (in addition to writing the code itself). The philosophy of economics, and psychology, and morality, all overlap in studies that show how people will readily abandon moral responsibilities if they are given ways to...

There's been plenty of buzz about Google's recent collaboration with Verizon on the subject of Net neutrality.  It's important to note that this collaboration has only resulted in a proposal in the form of a "suggested legislative framework for consideration by lawmakers."  Some media have been treating this proposal as more than what it is.  Here were its seven key points: