Java On The Client Side
  

"We're really [screwing] up on the client side," Gosling wrote to Richard Green, Sun's vice president of developer tools, in an e-mail dated May 13, 2002, "mostly through neglect."

Read the rest at CRN. Ouch, the truth hurts. via GMSV. [paradox1x]

Well at least Gosling realizes it. Now will they ever do anything to fix it?!? I don't think Sun understands the desktop. They understand servers (Unix/Solaris) but not the desktop.
12:33:25 PM    comment ()

Holiday
  No updates lately as I have been away on a 10 day holiday to Europe. Stay tuned.
6:21:39 AM    comment ()

O/R Comparisons
  David has created a nice comparison of a number of the Open Source O/R frameworks.
10:26:09 AM    comment ()

Pair Programming Game
  

...RULES: Get two developers in front of the same machine and give one of them a red hat to wear and another a green hat. Mr Red's role is to write a small unit-test that fails. In doing so, he clearly expresses the proposed interface and intention of the new code. As soon as he's happy with his failing test, he slides the keyboard over to Mrs Green. Mrs Green's intention is to do just enough work to make the test pass at which point the keyboard is passed back over to Mr Red. Repeat cycle... [Joe's Jelly]

We've tried to use XP & pair programming at work. The challenge for us has been a lack of discipline in writing unit tests. This sounds like a great way of structuring things. Go and read the rest of Joe's post for more details...
1:51:31 PM    comment ()

C# & CLI Standardization
  Checkout this article on the status of the ISO ratification of C# and the CLI (via Lambda the Ultimate.) While standardizing the language is certainly a step in the right direction, the thing that is really important is to standardize the APIs. Here's a key excerpt from the article:

Analysts said the C# and CLI submissions from Microsoft to ECMA and now ISO define only a subset of the .Net Framework that makes it possible to share data with applications on other operating systems. Not included, for example, is software needed to define a Windows or Web graphical user interface. Consequently, the portable programs people could write using C# and CLI are in practice limited to being non-graphical--for example, a credit card authentication service that another computer uses, not a human who would need a user interface. Also missing from the submission is the .Net code needed to access databases.

It's no skin off Microsoft's back to standardize the language & CLI (good for PR). As long as they don't standardize the APIs they will still effectively maintain their monopoly as applications written will be, in all likelyhood, using APIs only available on the Windows platform.
12:16:23 PM    comment ()

Cayenne & O/R Framework Comparisons
  I just discovered Cayenne, another O/R framework. I haven't had time to take a close look at Cayenne itself but they do have an interesting Wiki page that compares the features of quite a few of the different O/R frameworks that are out there. Are there any other websites that have attempted to collate this information? The cool thing about this one is that since it's a Wiki anyone can add more information to it...
1:01:39 PM    comment ()

Source Code Control II
  I just stumbled across SourceJammer on SourceForge. It's a source code control system written in Java. Does anyone have any experience with it? According to the features page it handles file renames...
11:40:04 PM    comment ()

Web Services Satire
  Webservile.com is pretty amusing. From their about page:

...A famous Roman poet once said "It is difficult not to write satire." Working in the software industry, and in particular in the much-hyped Web services space, we feel this way a lot. The smoke-and-mirrors vaporware world of software deserves more parody than it gets, so we thought we'd contribute our voice. We're not really anti-Web services; we believe that they're a meaningful and disruptive technological innovation... [Webservile.com]

Some web services they'd like to see: FindMyPants, GenderVerifier, RevenueGenerator, HypeOverSOAP and EMailOrderBride. Heh.
4:27:40 PM    comment ()

Source Code Control
  

...Been doing my technology evangelist / mentor bit at work this week, trying to encourage migration away from sourcesafe onto a half-decent scc system. Not having cross-platform access to our source is hampering us in so many ways. We have no budget, so I've been focussing on ways to make CVS as attractive as possible... [Pushing the envelope]

I can't comment on sourcesafe but we use CVS at work as we also have the "no budget" problem. I suppose CVS could be classed as half-decent but decent would definitely be going too far. My main complaint with CVS is that it doesn't support file renames (!!) without some kind of wacky hacks if you want to preserve the revision history of a renamed file. I find rename support to be essential when refactoring. I'm keeping a close eye on Subversion (still in alpha) which aims to address the shortcomings of CVS. Are there any other free/open source offerings out there that are more usable than CVS?
3:35:11 PM    comment ()

  Everyone seems to run full-fledged J2EE containers with Servlet/JSP engine integrated with EJBs on the same machine. I guess this makes sense from a performance standpoint but it seems to me this doesn't give you very good security...
12:37:45 AM    comment ()

Tomcat Vulnerability
  Time to upgrade to Tomcat 4.0.5 or Tomcat 4.1.12 as earlier versions have a security vulnerability:

Tomcat 4.0.4 and 4.1.10 (probably all other earlier versions also) are vulnerable to source code exposure by using the default servlet org.apache.catalina.servlets.DefaultServlet... [Security Focus]

A followup message reports that the Tomcat 3.2.x series isn't vulnerable. As I write this the Jakarta website appears to be down...
9:37:30 AM    comment ()

O/R Mapping Discussion
  Some interesting posts about O/R mapping. It started off with Gerhard Froehlich questioning the value of using an O/R bridges instead of plain old SQL. Joe Walnes followed up with a few comments based on his experience. Mike then followed that up with his own thoughts. One question: Which O/R mapping framework does JIRA use?
12:35:43 AM    comment ()