Over the years I have seen many configuration files. Most of them were unusable. There are many reasons for unusable configuration files. What I’ve learned from looking at large configurations are those main points: 1. Values Often configuration files use the wrong values. Developers tend to use true/false for switching options on and off. track-users = true The [...]

I often use the notion of interface and implementation dependencies, where interface dependencies are mostly always smaller. I think this is a very important concept to understand for Java developers, and although it seems obvious and self evident, many developers do not think along those lines and still couple classes too tightly. Take this example: class CassandraStorage [...]

I was using Guice in a project recently. Objects which did not come out of Guice got their dependencies not injected. So I had a global singleton where objects could get their dependencies. Yeah yeah I know singletons are bad and stuff. It would be nicer to let Guice handle it all, but sometimes this [...]

This interview is with Debasish Ghosh. He’s writing the successful blog Ruminations of a Programmer with the tag line “A programmer’s blog – will deal with everything that relates to a programmer. Occasionally, it will contain some humour, some politics and some sport news.”. Name: Debasish Ghosh (dghosh@acm.org) Blog: http://debasishg.blogspot.com Twitter: @debasishg Github: http://github.com/debasishg Tell us something about you (what [...]

I’ve set up continuous deployment for 2morethin.gs. Continuous deployment means that as soon as a developer finishes work, his code is pushed to the website. IMVU does it, as does Wordpress.com and kaChing. This post should show you that there is no magic in continuous deployment, everyone can do it. Why would one want to drop [...]

I’ve written already about Java Interview Questions here, here and here. Another question I sometimes ask is about Javas synchronized keyword. Can you tell me in which different ways one can use synchronized in Java and which are the pros and cons? There are two ways to use synchronized, as a method modifier and as a [...]

This is the first guest post on this blog. Sebastian Deutsch (@sippndipp) was kind enough to help me with this frontend topic. Sebastian Deutsch is one of the founders of 9elements.com. 9elements is a small software boutique with a strong focus on design that loves to build web applications Recruiting a frontend developer for a large [...]

If your application grows and you need to support more customers, there is the common wisdom to buy more hardware. Or solve performance problems with more hardware. But the simple math says there is a point where investing in software or OS optimization is much cheaper than buying more hardware. There are essentially three ways [...]

Actors are the new concurrency. They are everywhere. People make bold claims about actors, and while I do not agree with many of them, two in particular I regard as myths. Here they are: Actors are a shared nothing architecture Actors are easier to get right because of their shared nothing architecture I know I’m alone with calling [...]

Tail recursion seems to be an easy concept, but most people get it wrong – including me. Reading the latest German Java SPEKTRUM, I’ve found an article about parallel multicore development by Kornelius Fuhrer. One paragraph was about functional development and tail recursion. First he claims tail recursion makes functions 100% parallizeable (I guess broadly [...]

During the dot com bubble, I was a founder and startup CTO. At the beginning I wondered what to do as a CTO. There were many conflicting views on that position. From programming to vision, from technology to processes, from tools to people. After some time and more years at managing development teams and departments, [...]

BigPipe is a way of thinking for web pages. It introduces the concept of pagelets, small parts of the website. BigPipe was implemented at Facebook: BigPipe is a fundamental redesign of the dynamic web page serving system. The general idea is to decompose web pages into small chunks called pagelets, and pipeline them through several execution [...]

BigPipe is a way of thinking for web pages. It introduces the concept of pagelets, small parts of the website. BigPipe was implemented at Facebook: BigPipe is a fundamental redesign of the dynamic web page serving system. The general idea is to decompose web pages into small chunks called pagelets, and pipeline them through several execution [...] 15

Updates: 1. I do love Scala as proven by this blog 2. I’m critical of the things I love 3. I’m ok with a language that is marketed as a research language, I’m not ok if this language markets itself as post functional, the next big thing and a Java successor. Update 2: Community response as [...]

Updates: 1. I do love Scala as proven by this blog 2. I’m critical of the things I love 3. I’m ok with a language that is marketed as a research language, I’m not ok if this language markets itself as post functional, the next big thing and a Java successor. Update 2: Community response as [...] 180