Thinking Inside a Bigger Box
Welcome to Johannes Brodwall's blog. I use this space to work on articles mostly about software development, with a focus on Java, SOA, and Agile software development. Many of the articles you will find here are not much more than drafts, and I certainly appreciate input on how to make them better.
If you wonder about the title of this blog, Thinking Outside the Box may answer your questions.
I work as the lead software architect of BBS, the company that handles interbank services in Norway. In my copious free time, I develop software and consult companies in development practices and architecture. For more about the services I can offer, please see my resume.
Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Fri, 03/08/2013 - 03:31.
There are only so many ways to test that your persistence layer is implemented correctly or that you’re using an ORM correctly. Here’s my canonical tests for a repository (Java-version):
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Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Fri, 10/12/2012 - 04:11.
Sometimes, small questions lead to big answers. Sometimes these answers are controversial. One such question is “What does this warning about serialVersionUID mean”? All the advice out there basically is for developers who don’t know what’s going on to write code that will ignore errors when something unexpected happens. In my view – this is exactly the wrong approach. The safe way to act is to make sure that your program crashes if you don’t have control.
Java programmers usually get this warning when they write code that looks like this:
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Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 07:39.
I’m working on this idea, and I don’t know if it appeals to you guys. I’d like your input on whether this is something to explore further.
Here’s the deal: I’ve encountered teams who, when working with SOA technologies have been dragged into the mud by the sheer complexity of their tools. I’ve only seen this in Java, but I’ve heard from some C# developers that they recognize the phenomenon there as well. I’d like to explore an alternative approach.
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Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Tue, 07/10/2012 - 10:41.
Changing your perspective even a small amount can have profound effects on how you approach your system.
Let’s say you’re writing a web application in Java. In the system you deal with orders, customers and products. As a web application, your classes include staples like PersonController, PersonRepository, CustomerController and OrderService. How do you organize your classes into packages?
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Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Thu, 12/22/2011 - 09:28.
Do you know how to apply coding practices the technology stack that you use on a daily basis? Do you know how the technology stack works? For many programmers, it’s easy enough to use test-driven development with a trivial example, but it can be very hard to know how to apply it to the problems you face every day in your job.
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Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Fri, 09/23/2011 - 12:39.
On larger projects, I’ve always ended up resorting to writing down a lot of detailed specifications, many of which are wrong, irrelevant or we might not be ready to answer them yet. On small projects, the dialogue between the customer and the developers can flow easy, and good things happen.
The quick analysis
Developer: … so we’re going to complete the current task tomorrow or the day after. Could we discuss what to do next before you’re off to your next meeting?
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Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Sun, 08/07/2011 - 18:35.
Oracle released Java 7 on July 28, 2011. This is nearly 5 years after the release of Java 6 in December 2006. The release received a lot of bad press, both because it is very meager on features, and because it shipped with a severe bug. Nevertheless, once the most serious bugs have been fixed, you might think about starting to use Java 7. What will this mean?
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Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Fri, 11/05/2010 - 03:00.
The more I code, the more I’ve learned to appreciate keeping the code clean even during complex refactorings. By “clean”, I mean that the code always compiles and the test always run.
I often find myself in a situation where I have a method call that’s starting to accumulate parameters. Something like this:
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Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Fri, 11/05/2010 - 01:54.
The more I code, the more I’ve learned to appreciate keeping the code clean even during complex refactorings. By “clean”, I mean that the code always compiles and the test always run.
I often find myself in a situation where I have a method call that’s starting to accumulate parameters. Something like this:
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Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Tue, 10/26/2010 - 09:00.
I though I’d do something different this time. Instead of describing something technical, I have recorded a five minute video that shows a very neat trick in Java: How to create a bit of code that wraps existing method calls to an object with any behavior you may desire.
This is nothing new, but I’ve noticed that not many developers know how to use it, so I hope this video may be useful:
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Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Tue, 10/26/2010 - 08:22.
I though I’d do something different this time. Instead of describing something technical, I have recorded a five minute video that shows a very neat trick in Java: How to create a bit of code that wraps existing method calls to an object with any behavior you may desire.
This is nothing new, but I’ve noticed that not many developers know how to use it, so I hope this video may be useful:
Read more ...
Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Thu, 10/14/2010 - 06:00.
Ctrl-1 is the magic “do what I think” button in Eclipse. Whenever I press it, Eclipse seems to come up with something that’s helpful in the current context. In this blog post, I illustrate 10 things that Eclipse hide under the ctrl-1 keypress. This is a follow up on my post on Eclipse stenography.
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