A Java geek

If you’ve got a professional attitude regarding your developer carrer, chances are you’re looking to improve your knowledge, whether it’s language-related or framework-related (or even process-related but it is more far-fetched). So far, I found the following ways to do so, each step bringing deeper knowledge than the former:

• The first strategy when you want to learn about something is to read about it. This is the easiest, since there are so many resources available online. This is also the poorest in terms of value since:

• Sometimes you fail to understand but you cannot realize it until you’re faced with mistakes
• What you read fades at an astonishing rate
• The second step would be following tutorials. There are also plenty of resources available, but in this case, you code. It may seem strange, but I’ve found better understanding when confronted by the results of my code than by just reading
• Then, you may code your own aplplications. This leads to discover best practices by yourself, and experience always leads to deeper knowledge. For example, coding for my pet project really gave me better insights into Swing than if I just followed some book. The trade-off here is that I sometimes have to refactor some code, because I learned or discovered a better way to do things (e.g. a new class I just learned about).
• Next is giving technical support. We each tend to always code the same way, so being confronted to code from colleagues leads to a better understanding through exposure to previously unknown challenges.
• Beyond that, one has to understand the intricacies of the language/framework. The best way to achieve this is to teach a course: since you will have to answer questions, you will have to understand each and every aspect of the subject. This is the path I followed after 2 or 3 years of developing in Java and it really boosted my skills.
• Finally, you can write a book. While this may seem on par with teaching, I found it even more inspiring since you have to master all the aspects of the subject at the time of the writing (while in a class, you can always tell the audience you’ll the answer by the next session).

I’ve praticed each of these strategies, so I’m pretty sure about their respective value reagrding each other. I’m also really interested to hear from other strategies and at what value they could bring.

Spams are a blogger worst enemy. For me, things went worse gradually, until last month, when I had to face about 10 spam comments per day on average, even though I had the WP-SpamFree plugin installed. When spams were fewer, this was not a problem since I had to moderate comments beforehand: users saw nothing. On my part, however, that meant some precious time managing comments and with the number of spam raising, I couldn’t do it anymore.

My first reflex was to turn authentication on: you couldn’t post a comment without being a legit user first. This was not really a good thing since I would have to manage users and legit comments would drop since people are not really interested in managing another account. However, relying on an external account provider (like Google, OpenId, or whatever) would adress both issues. The crucial point would be to choose the right third-party provider.

Before I could dive further into the problem, I noticed one plugin I regularly deactivated: the Akismet plugin is included in WordPress distribution since I first use the product. Akismet checks comments against their service: it automatically manages spam, either through a web-service or an API. In order to use Akismet, you had to get a license key first. Aye, there’s the rub! In the past, the key could be given free provided you ran on WordPress.com, which is not my case. I don’t know when but those policies have changed: you can now get a key for hosted WordPress instances if those are personal blogs! In this case, you get to choose the price you pay (between 0 and 120$ per year). To be frank, I paid 0, but since I activated the plugin, it managed all the spams and let through 3 genuine comments. This doesn’t prevent me for paranoicaly sifting through all spams to check if it didn’t mark a real comment as spam but until yet, it has not.

In a month or two, I think I will be confident enough no to check anymore and I will pay for a new licence key: time is money.

At my customer’s site, I have the chance to work in a team of architects. This is rare enough to be mentioned, since most of the time, I’m alone. This is an opportunity to exchange thoughts. Earlier this year, we talked between us about similitudes that sometimes exist between searching for an architectural solution and hunting in 3 phases.

At the beginning, it is simple enough: the requirements are clear, and the path to them is straight.

You’re tasked with hunting for just a little rabbit and you’ve munitions enough for a dozen. You begin with following the rabbit’s trail and in fact you find plenty. The forest ia a sight to behold. The sun lightens the trees through their branches. You can even hear the delicate tingling of a river nearby. All is well and you  imagine yourself with your trophy in just a few hours.

Then, when you go beyond the surface, things are not what they seem: requirements are not so clear. Some are not so important when others that looked like nice-to-have seem to be fundamental to the core business. Even worse, new requirements appear from nowhere: they were so important that the business didn’t even think to write down about them.

Hours have passed and no sign of rabbits. You felt some rain drops at first, and then it rained like Hell. The rabbit’s trails has disappeared under the pour. Despite these conditions, you seemed to see some animals. In fact, it was the whole damn zoo here and there: hedgehogs, raccons, snakes, deers, you name it… but no rabbits. The easy trophy you imagined earlier is long gone. Things couldn’t go worse.

With some much going on, the cost of the project is going to the roof, with no tangible results so far, since the solution has not been found yet. With red lights flashing everywhere, management is bound to get their hands dirty and they don’t like it. Everyone begins to cover for himself, and searchs for someone to blame.

You’re so soaked you are now searching for anything which could even remotely pass for a rabbit. A light of hope awakens inside you when you see something moving in the distance. Going into this direction, you notice it was not so far away, but it’s much bigger than expected. Oh my god, it’s a bear! With fear, you realize it’s not just a bear, but the biggest, meanest Grizzly bear you ever saw. It doesn’t like rain and it likes even less seeing you. With some deep-rooted survival instinct, you reach for your rifle, you aim and shoot. The ‘click’ that follows make you realize powder doesn’t go well with rain. It’s your last thought…

Of course, it’s a bit dramatic. Of course, it doesn’t fit the description of all the projects that go well. But I have smelled the foul breath of the Grizzly once or twice and let me tell you it followed this exact scenario.

Note: you now do understand why I followed the software architectural path and not the literary one

Do you remember the classic Atari ST game where you, as a fish, eat other fishes while getting bigger and avoiding bigger fishes to eat you? It seems the last 4 years has seen its share of fishes eat and being eaten in the IT business.

Oh, it began innocently enough. JBoss just hired the Hibernate team. It was in November 2005. Less than 6 months later, JBoss was bought by Red Hat. I thought: “Wow, now Red Hat can provide a whole stack from Operating System to Middleware!”

January 2008: Oracle finally buys BEA Systems, the only serious commercial concurrent of IBM in the application server market. It already tried the buyout in October 2007. I then thought: “Oracle can provide the last 2 tier of any JEE application, Middleware and Database (please don’t raise the issue of Oracle Application Server). That’s interesting!”

About the same time, Sun has got the same idea the other way around when it buys MySQL. I thought: “They have both invested in OpenSource, that’s good strategy!”

When SpringSource bought Hyperion, my sense of wonder began to dry.

Now that Oracle has bought Sun and VMWare has bought SpringSource, I’m finally more concerned than ecstatic. Concurrent products that competed against one another are now in the same provider’s portfolio. No business has interest in having the same redundant softwares in its catalog. And lacking competition means no evolution, like Darwin theorized.

I always complained about Microsoft’s choices being more marketing oriented than technically sound. It could do that until it was the major player in its field. Java and Google put an end to that (ok, not entirely, this is open to discussion but let me make my point). In turn, and although Java was meant to stay a loooong time in version 1.4, Sun made it evolve because of the progress made by the .Net framework. From my humble point of view, that’s a vertuous circle in IT darwinism.

One may rightfully think the circle is now broken, when one looks at the following points:

• Oracle Application Server and WebLogic are now owned by Oracle. Whereas stopping the development of OC4J may not be a bad thing in itself, I can’t be so sure about the whole stack surrounding both.
• Even worse, why would Oracle need to put money in Glassfish development, now that it has WebLogic? I’m not an ardent Glassfish defender but it plays its role in the JEE ecosystem.
• I can’t even think about Oracle database and MySQL, now that Oracle distributes Oracle Lite for free. That goes without saying but it is for development purposes only and without an OpenSource license of course.
• What about JDeveloper and NetBeans? I fear only very bad things since if NetBeans development is stopped, it will mean IBM will do as it pleases with Eclipse (yes, I know about the Eclipse Foundation, but it still smells).
• And poor JRockit?
• And so on, ad nauseam.

The present concentration trend raises concerns, at least from me, because it may well end when there’s only one single player left standing. Remember the Atari game I talked about at the beginning? It was aptly named “Shark! Shark!” because regardless of the size you were, you could always be eaten by the shark. Whoever will end up being the shark, I can only guess, but if this doesn’t stop soon, we are all about to get eaten!

If you already visited here, you can clearly see something has changed. In order to celebrate my new job, Spring eternal and what have you, I changed my blog’s theme. I previously used Mandigo, which has many, many options but I grew tired of it. Mandigo is a beautiful theme but I wanted something more focused, that doesn’t take precedence over what is written. My choice went with iNove, even if I had to hack the theme PHP scripts to keep Goggle analytics scripts and favicon. It’s sober, modern and (I think) more oriented toward a geek’s blog.

As you may know (or not), Firefox 3 is to be released in June 2008. For this occasion, the Mozilla Foundation intends to set record for most software downloads in 24 hours. If you already use Firefox and plan on using the version 3, help them !

Visit Download Day and pledge to download Firefox 3 the day it is released. By the way, put their servers on their knees : they’re practically begging for it.

Last time I checked, France is severely lagging behind Germany and Spain…

I’m sorry (not really in fact) about the title. I just got the Sun Certified Web Component Developer (CX-055-083) certification with a score of 91%. I’m happy. Life is good. Now I’m reaching for the next step, the Architect certification. Wish me luck !

Yes ! After many grueling hours (days and weeks !) of work, I finally managed to get the Sun Certified Java Programer for Java 5. I hope it will be the first step toward my goal : the Sun Certified Enterprise Architect. Meanwhile, I ready myself for the Sun Certified Web Component Developer.