Discursive blogs

Common Java Cookbook PDF Now Available

tobrien — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:34:08 +0000

A few people noticed that the PDF for Common Java Cookbook was removed from the site a few months ago, and I've been getting a steady stream of emails requesting access to these file. If you want to download the PDF for the Common Java Cookbook, sign up for an Account on this site, and go to the book download page. You can also signup for a mailing list if you are interested in updates. Happy reading.

Book(s):

Common Java Cookbook

Loukides Captures the Key Difference in Google v. Apple Strategy

tobrien — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:24:07 +0000

Mike Loukides writes "App Inventor and the culture wars" on Radar this morning. Here's an excerpt:

"Apple is saying "trust us, it will just work." Google is saying "We'll help you to be creative and make your own stuff that works for you." There's nothing inherently wrong with either approach. Apple's approach is more appropriate for an entertainment device, more like the 60s TV, radio, or dial phone. It does more, but it's still sealed; you can't open it up and hack it. There are plenty of people who want that kind of experience--possibly a majority. Google is opening up the guts and letting you create--and taking the gamble that people who haven't been creative in the past will start."

Go read the full post on Radar.

Related Organization(s):

O'Reilly

Maven as a Candidate: Winning Over the "Undecideds"

tobrien — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 16:32:09 +0000

It isn't a perfect analogy, Maven isn't constantly having to raise money or make tough votes on legislation, but I've always thought of Maven as a politician with an established positive base and an established negative base. Like any politician, there is an established base of people who are predisposed to "vote" for you, there is an established base of people who are predisposed to "vote" against you, and then there are the valuable undecideds. This is the real audience, you don't fight for your base, you try to convince the undecideds to vote for you.

If you were trying to campaign for Maven, you have three options:

Convince the Opposition - It doesn't work. If you are deadset against Maven in 2010, you are probably not going to move toward Maven in the coming months unless something dramatic happens. Ok, that's not true, I've seen this work, but you can't make a direct attack on the opposition, you have to cede some ground to gain some ground (but that is a different blog post).
Play to Your Own Base - Believe it or not, this is important. If you lose your base, you've lost your support. Maven's in the #1 spot for build tools at the moment, but in technology things can change quickly. Maven's base is under an almost constant assault from people peddling other options. Your base has to feel supported.
Win Over the Undecideds - This is where it gets interesting. Since Maven is constantly under attack (deserved or undeserved) we're constantly seeing people Tweet or comment about having to make a decision about Maven. The competition tends to attack Maven's deficiencies, and it is easy to get baited into a fight about the deficiencies of alternative tools.

Book(s):

Maven: The Complete Reference

Maven by Example

Mirah: Taking Performance to the Next Level with Java's Ruby

tobrien — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:47:54 +0000

I published a short interview with Charles Nutter on Mirah, an attempt to modify the Ruby language ever so slightly to create a new language that can be compiled to bytecode. What differentiates Mirah from Groovy, Scala, and other JVM-based languages is that Nutter wants a language that can compile directly to bytecode with no runtime dependencies.

Read the full interview here

In defense of Maven

tobrien — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 08:32:19 +0000

Steve Ebersole's wrote a "This isn't a rant" rant on the JBoss community site where he proceeds to attack a series of Maven straw men. I'm not going to get into it, other than some quick responses:

1. Docbook? You have a hard time managing DocBook with Maven? C'mon - I manage a library of books with Maven all of which are written in DocBook. The artifacts are deployed to a repository manager, and the builds are all run through Hudson. We spit out ePub, PDF, HTML using the docbkx work from Wilfred Springer.

Beyond JRuby: Nutter's Mirah

tobrien — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 20:56:10 +0000

Developing with JRuby is interesting, but it is also something of a challenge to deploy. If you develop applications deployed with JRuby Rack, I'm guessing that you probably don't bother starting a JRuby Rack web application as a part of your development cycle. In my experience, JRuby Rack is great, but the startup times are challenging. The solution? (It isn't satisfying...) Use C-Ruby during development and start Rails with "ruby scripts/server".

iBatis moved to Google Code

tobrien — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:41:31 +0000

I see two big options for persistence: Hibernate and iBatis. Even though Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) has fallen out of vouge lately, it is still hugely important to most systems. While I've contributed to books on Hibernate and I continue to use it, I've come to see iBatis as the lightweight alternative to the monster that is Hibernate + Spring. So, when I saw that iBatis was moving to the attic my first fear was that the project had somehow died.

The Tools I Use to Publish Books

tobrien — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:00:00 +0000

Someone recently asked me what tool they should use to write a book. I've decided to answer with a confusing (and somewhat intimidating) diagram. Here it is you can click on the diagram for a larger view:

Book Publishing Pipeline

Book(s):

Common Java Cookbook

Multi-column Text Layout for 8.5x11 Books

tobrien — Fri, 28 May 2010 16:47:46 +0000

I've switched a number of books over to 8.5" x 11" format. Although this is not a traditional size for computer books (most computer books are around 7"x 9"), moving to 8.5" x 11" reduces page count for printing conserving resources and reducing cost. I've found it much cheaper to print books on 50-weight 8.5x11 vs. 60-weight 7x9. While, I'm comfortable with DocBook XSL, I dread FO, and the idea of configuring the XSL to create two-column FO is very possible, but wasn't something I wanted to jump into without first evaluating InDesign's support for columns.

Book(s):

Common Java Cookbook

Tim O'Reilly's Talk at MySQL 2010

tobrien — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:58:45 +0000

I wasn't at MySQL Conf this year, but I heard that Tim's talk was worth watching. It is. As we continue to see the Internet fall victim to corporate consolidation, it will become increasingly important for us to listen to people calling for openness and an internet not dominated by a few, large corporate titans.