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, 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:
Read more ...
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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Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Thu, 10/14/2010 - 05:32.
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.
Read more ...
Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Thu, 09/30/2010 - 11:00.
Pair programming and test-driven development are some of the practices that are most often talked about and least often actually understood. So I’ve decided to undertake the task to teach myself to program a simple, yet realistic problem with a pair programming partner. The goal is to create an entertaining and realistic performance that portrays what it feels like to work like this.
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Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Thu, 09/30/2010 - 10:17.
Pair programming and test-driven development are some of the practices that are most often talked about and least often actually understood. So I’ve decided to undertake the task to teach myself to program a simple, yet realistic problem with a pair programming partner. The goal is to create an entertaining and realistic performance that portrays what it feels like to work like this.
Read more ...
Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Tue, 09/28/2010 - 02:00.
According to Wikipedia, stenography or shorthand is “is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed or brevity of writing as compared to a normal method of writing a language”.
Just as a stenographer learns to take down information really fast, a good programmer can learn to write code really fast by taking advantage of his or her tools. In this post I’ll show you my secret code stenography tricks.
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Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Tue, 09/28/2010 - 01:28.
According to Wikipedia, stenography or shorthand is “is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed or brevity of writing as compared to a normal method of writing a language”.
Just as a stenographer learns to take down information really fast, a good programmer can learn to write code really fast by taking advantage of his or her tools. In this post I’ll show you my secret code stenography tricks.
Read more ...
Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Tue, 09/07/2010 - 10:00.
At JavaZone 2010 I will be giving a lightning talk on APIs that use dynamic subclasses. These APIs make it possible to do things in Java that seem like pure magic. Here are some ideas of what you can get from these APIs and a look under the hood, so you really understand what’s going on.
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Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Tue, 09/07/2010 - 09:45.
At JavaZone 2010 I will be giving a lightning talk on APIs that use dynamic subclasses. These APIs make it possible to do things in Java that seem like pure magic. Here are some ideas of what you can get from these APIs and a look under the hood, so you really understand what’s going on.
Read more ...
Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Mon, 05/03/2010 - 17:00.
“Design” is a verb, not a noun. If I want to create a good program, studying the process of getting there is much more important than the resulting software. This is why I use coding katas as a form of study. I find an interesting problem problem and then solve the same problem over and over again. In this blog post, I will focus on six principles of software design. I will illustrate each with a screencast from a kata.
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Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Sun, 05/02/2010 - 19:00.
“Design” is a verb, not a noun. If I want to create a good program, studying the process of getting there is much more important than the resulting software. This is why I use coding katas as a form of study. I find an interesting problem problem and then solve the same problem over and over again. In this blog post, I will focus on six principles of software design. I will illustrate each with a screencast from a kata.
Read more ...
Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Tue, 04/06/2010 - 12:00.
My colleague Thomas sent me a very interesting link about attempts to solve Sudoku using test-driven development. The article, somewhat unfairly, pits Ron Jeffries’ explorations of Sudoku using test-driven development against Peter Norvig’s “design driven” approach.
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Submitted by Johannes Brodwal on Tue, 04/06/2010 - 11:59.
My colleague Thomas sent me a very interesting link about attempts to solve Sudoku using test-driven development. The article, somewhat unfairly, pits Ron Jeffries’ explorations of Sudoku using test-driven development against Peter Norvig’s “design driven” approach.
Read more ...
