Java (General)

Recent Postings of Interest - 10 January 2011

Dustin Marx — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:32:00 -0500

I have read numerous blog posts recently that I wanted to make note of because I have found them interesting and because I'd like to keep a reference to them. Because one of my blog's purposes is as a glorified bookmark, this post points to these useful posts and adds a little detailed description. Topics covered by the referenced posts include HTML5, Java, Perl, perception of what's cool in software development.

Top Ten Rising Web Technologies in 2010

Read more ...

HotSpot JVM Options Displayed: -XX:+PrintFlagsInitial and -XX:+PrintFlagsFinal

Dustin Marx — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 15:57:00 -0500

Inspecting HotSpot JVM Options is a great post for those wishing to understand better the options provided by Oracle's (formerly Sun's) HotSpot Java Virtual Machine.

Read more ...

Regular Expressions in Groovy (via Java)

Dustin Marx — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 22:47:00 -0500

The people who attended my presentations at RMOUG Training Days 2010 asked several good questions. One question that was asked in the Groovy presentation that I really wish I had included a slide on was "Does Groovy support regular expressions?" The focus of my presentation was on using Groovy for scripting, so this was a very natural and relevant question.

Read more ...

Significant Software Development Developments of 2010

Dustin Marx — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 12:30:00 -0500

With the end of 2010 rapidly approaching, it is time to summarize what I believe are the ten most significant developments in 2010 in the software development community. As I have disclaimed before, this is entirely biased toward my interests. It is difficult to gauge the importance of events in spaces one is not familiar with, so I tend to favor areas that I do know and am able to make some educated (albeit anecdotal) conclusions about their significance.

Read more ...

Using Generic 'log' Methods in Java Logging

Dustin Marx — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 23:37:00 -0500

When developing Java applications, it is easy to get used to invoking logging on the provided logger via its log level-specific methods.

Read more ...

Lightweight Persistence with Java Serialization

Dustin Marx — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 16:59:00 -0500

The Java SE 6 documentation on Object Serialization states the following about the uses of Java serialization:

Read more ...

Java toString() Considerations

Dustin Marx — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 10:23:00 -0500

Even beginning Java developers are aware of the utility of the Object.toString() method that is available to all instances of Java classes and can be overridden to provide useful details regarding any particular instance of a Java class. Unfortunately, even seasoned Java developers occasionally don't take full advantage of this powerful Java feature for a variety of reasons.

Read more ...

Stringifying Java Arrays

Dustin Marx — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 01:18:00 -0500

J2SE 5 provided significant new language features that made Java significantly easier to use and more expressive than it had ever been.

Read more ...

Java's System.identityHashCode

Dustin Marx — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 02:08:00 -0500

The java.lang.System class provides many useful general utilities including handles to the standard output stream, the standard input stream, the standard error stream, and the

Read more ...

Java 7 and Java 8 JSRs Released!

Dustin Marx — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 01:53:00 -0500

There has been a lot of big news in the Java world as of late. The recent announcements that IBM is backing OpenJDK and Apple is backing OpenJDK were huge in and of themselves.

Read more ...

Apple and Oracle Are Behind OpenJDK!

Dustin Marx — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 11:13:00 -0500

I received the November 2010 edition of Oracle's Java Developer Newsletter in my e-mail inbox last night. The lead story is titled IBM Joins OpenJDK (a subject of my previous post IBM and Oracle Are Behind OpenJDK!).

Read more ...

Cannot Assume Serializability for Java Map's Nested Classes

Dustin Marx — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 23:09:00 -0400

A colleague of mine recently ran into an issue that I have not run into myself, but found to be interesting and, in my opinion, worth blogging about here.

Read more ...

Ten Tips for Using Java Stack Traces

Dustin Marx — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 02:23:00 -0400

Most Java developers are somewhat familiar with Java stack traces and how to read and analyze stack traces. However, for beginning Java developers, there are some areas of stack traces that might be a little confusing. In this post, I look at some tips for reading Java stack traces and responding appropriately based on what the stack trace reports.

Read more ...

Java's Synthetic Methods

Dustin Marx — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 11:01:00 -0400

In this blog post, I look at the concept of Java synthetic methods. The post summarizes what a Java synthetic method is, how one can be created and identified, and the implications of Java synthetic methods on Java development.

Read more ...

IBM and Oracle Are Behind OpenJDK!

Dustin Marx — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 01:20:00 -0400

Years from now, when we all bore our grandchildren with stories of the history of the Java programming language, the date of 11 October 2010 may be considered a landmark date in Java's history. For on that date, the two biggest players in all of Javadom agreed to collaborate on OpenJDK.

Read more ...

Seven Indispensable NetBeans Java Hints

Dustin Marx — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 00:05:00 -0400

I have found NetBeans Java Hints to be extremely useful in Java development. In this blog post I look at NetBeans Java Hints that I deem indispensable in Java development. I will be using NetBeans 6.9 for the screen snapshots in this post. As this Wiki page indicates, there are numerous hints new to NetBeans 6.9.

Read more ...

javac's -Xlint Options

Dustin Marx — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 13:58:00 -0400

The Java programming language compiler (javac) provided by Oracle (and formerly by Sun) has several non-standard options that are often useful. One of the most useful is the set of non-standard options that print out warnings encountered during compilation. That set of options is the subject of this post.

Read more ...

JavaOne 2010: Visualizing the Java Concurrent API

Dustin Marx — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:11:00 -0400

One of my goals at JavaOne 2010 was to attend some sessions on Java concurrency. I had not been aware of the Java Concurrent Animated project until reading the abstract for this presentation:

Read more ...

JavaOne 2010: Unit Testing That's Not So Bad: Small Things That Make a Big Difference

Dustin Marx — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 18:33:00 -0400

I knew that the JavaOne 2010 presentation "Unit Testing That's Not That Bad: Small Things That Make a Big Difference" would be popular and so I signed up for it early and made sure I got there in the time period in which early access seating applied.

Read more ...

Common Java Object Functionality with Project Lombok

Dustin Marx — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 03:27:00 -0400

Project Lombok is a small library that can be used to reduce the amount of boilerplate Java code that is commonly written for Java classes. Project Lombok does this via annotations that can be added to the Java class for which common methods are desired.

Read more ...

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Java's Ternary Operator

Dustin Marx — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:41:00 -0400

I have long felt that one of the attributes of the best software developers is an ability to learn new things and to even change their opinions as appropriate as they learn new things or are exposed to differing ideas that refine and enhance their thinking. Often, the best developers already have enough experience to have mostly solid opinions that in many cases are only strengthened as they gain additional experience. However, the best developers can admit when their long-held beliefs may n

Read more ...

Log Level Inflation

Dustin Marx — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 19:19:00 -0400

There are many types of inflation. The best known inflation, economic inflation, represents a "rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time" (Wikipedia article). The rise in prices makes the money people have worth less (can purchase less with the same money).

Read more ...

Finding RMI Ports with Groovy

Dustin Marx — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:11:00 -0400

In a previous blog post, I demonstrated using a simple Groovy script to display all names bound to a particular RMI registry on a specified host/port. This script is easy to understand and use, but does require knowing which host and port to extract the bound names for.

Read more ...

Using groovyc To Compile Groovy Scripts

Dustin Marx — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:24:00 -0400

For most Groovy scripts I use, I simply run the script from its Groovy source code as-is and allow the compilation to take place implicitly.

Read more ...

Searching JAR Files with Groovy

Dustin Marx — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 02:13:00 -0400

My favorite use of Groovy continues to be for scripting in a Java development environment. In this blog post, I demonstrate a simple Groovy script for searching JARs recursively under a provided directory for a file that includes the specified string.

Here is the Groovy script (findClassInJar.groovy):

findClassInJar.groovy
!/usr/bin/env groovy

Read more ...