Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Software Development Posts of Interest - 18 May 2011

I use this post to reference several posts and blogs I have found interesting in recent days and to explain what about them interests me. The posts cover topics such as Oracle's new licensing terms for JRockit JVM, Oracle's proposals for changes to the Java Community Process, Groovy++, attributes of a great programmer, and several other topics.


JRockit Free for Development

The post JRockit is Now Free (and Other Java License Updates) talks about how merging of the (formerly Sun) HotSpot JVM and the (formerly BEA) JRockit JVM has required more than just engineering effort: work on licensing has also been required. A side benefit of this licensing work is the release of these two JVMs under a new Binary Code License (BCL). The post summarizes key principles of the new license and distinguishes between "JRockit is now free (gratis) for development and internal production use on general purpose computers" and "Commercial features continue to require a commercial license." The post includes a list of questions and answers related to JRockit JVM and these licensing changes.


Java Community Process 2.0?

Oracle has issued JSR 348 ("Towards a new version of the Java Community Process") that "proposes a variety of changes and adjustments to the Java Community Process." This is covered in The Java Source blog post Oracle Introduces New Java Specification Requests to Evolve Java Community Process and in the related press release. Many of the proposed actions imply a desire for greater transparency in the Java Community Process. James Sugrue outlines how the specification aims to improve transparency, participation, agility, and governance in the post Oracle Planning to Refresh the Java Community Process.


Groovy++: Better Java and Better Groovy

Alex Tkachman and Roshan Dawrani have written an article for Dr. Dobb's Journal called Language of the Month: Groovy++, How Java and Groovy Can Be Better. Tkachman is the creator of Groovy++ and Dawrani was the first external contributor to Groovy++ project. Both of the article's authors are obviously fans of Groovy++. After introducing Groovy++, the authors end their article with this conclusion:
Groovy++ is powerful, fast programming language designed to be easy to learn for Java developers. It builds on both Groovy and Java by combining together statically and dynamically typed code, giving developers the best of both worlds. The result of using Groovy++ in a project is expressive and simple code along with the safety and speed of a statically compiled language.


Compilation Errors with Java SE 6 Update 25

According to a dynaTrace post thoroughly called Jave 6 Update 25 produces random OutOfMemory Errors during Hotspot Compilation, their use of Java SE 6 Update 25 has led to "random crashes of the Java Runtime on Windows OS" in the Hotspot Compiler Thread. More details on what they are seeing are available in the bug they filed (Bug 7042582).


Java Miranda Methods

Because I wasn't aware of Java Miranda Methods until recently, I found this post from September 2001 to be somewhat interesting from a historical perspective. Miranda methods are not part of the Java Language Specification, but were introduced in early versions of Java as a "counterbug" intended to help with "abstract methods defined only in interfaces not being found." What is even more interesting to me than this historical novelty is that a September 2001 list message would be newly popular in 2011. This post is featured both in DZone (145 clicks and 4 "up" votes) and in Reddit (7 comments in May 2011).

Sami Koivu's August 2009 post Appease the serialization gods (and other interesting comments from the Java sources) collects several funny comments from the JDK source code and includes the cited comment from ClassDefinition regarding "Miranda methods" (from sun.tools.java.ClassDefinition).


Digg and Delicious Doomed?

In Chronicle of a death foretold: Digg and Delicious, Mihai Cernea predicts "Digg will be soon turned off" and "the next best thing that Yahoo can do is to shut down Delicious." Cernea points out that their loss is Reddit's gain. In addition, Cernea covers the success of Facebook along with MySpace's successful survival tactic.


LinkedIn Initial Public Offering

The Reuters article LinkedIn IPO prices at $45 per share, but risks real talks about another social site, LinkedIn, and its selling of nearly 8 million shares today at $45US per share. The article covers the IPO and risks the author believes are inherent in this investment.


Top Ten Ways to Get Fired

The In the Workplace column Top 10 Ways to Get Fired lists ten behaviors that can often lead to termination of employment. Most of the behaviors on the list are not surprising or controversial. I especially like item ten: "Pointing the Finger at Everyone but Yourself." This is the type of thing I was referencing in my post Center of the Universe Syndrome.


Top Ten Attributes of a Great Programmer

Steve Riley's post The Top Ten Attributes of a Great Programmer starts by listing Riley's top ten list and then he adds a little more background on each of the ten items. I largely agree with his list and his more detailed assessments. Indeed, I've blogged on the importance of passion and confidence in effective developers and the importance of constantly trying to learn and improve. Several of the numerous comments on this post are also worth reading and add some funny (or sad) ones that are all too true.


Conclusion

The blogs and articles cited and briefly described in this post contain additional perspectives on topics that I believe will be of general interest to many Java developers and to many software developers in general.

1 comment:

@DustinMarx said...

Mark Reinhold has a new location for his blog and one of his recent posts is OpenJDK Community Bylaws: Second public draft. In this post, Reinhold states that this second public draft of the OpenJDK Community Bylaws "attempts to address all feedback received, both publicly and privately, on the first public draft."