Eric Lefevre-Ardant on Java & Agile

Default JDK file encoding and Eclipse, running on Mac OS X

Eric Lefevre-Ardant — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 17:06:52 +0000

File encoding is notoriously a difficult problem for developers to fully grok. Development environments and IDEs do not always help. I recently had a test failing under Eclipse, whereas the same test was passing fine in the command line using … Continue reading →

A classic case of Data Envy

Eric Lefevre-Ardant — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:57:50 +0000

TL;TD: Refactoring classes that have data envy is easy. Do it. Here is a snippet extracted from the last project I worked on: // somewhere in a class asset.setHasAssociatedImage(!StringUtils.isBlankOrNull(imageName)); asset.setImageName(imageName); // in another class if (asset.hasAssociatedImage()) { image.setUrl(categoryName + "/" … Continue reading →

Avoid annotations with Mockito

Eric Lefevre-Ardant — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 18:31:23 +0000

On the Mockito mailing list and on Stackoverflow, there are a significant number of questions that actually reveal that the person asking did not perfectly understand what the Mockito annotations do. Indeed, the annotations are rather magical and their behavior … Continue reading →

[Musings] Hot Chocolate for the Busy

Eric Lefevre-Ardant — Sat, 10 Nov 2012 16:28:39 +0000

I used to think that the only way to heat milk properly for preparing hot chocolate was by using a saucepan. I eventually decided to experiment with a microwave oven. (the latest version of this recipe is available here) What … Continue reading →

Refactoring to Fantom

Eric Lefevre-Ardant — Thu, 24 May 2012 19:00:26 +0000

This post in an introduction to Fantom via the refactoring of Java code. TL; DR: Fantom is basically a better Java with a very similar syntax, but with lots of little simplifications and some powerful features such as functions. Let’s … Continue reading →

A novel way to spam blogs for SEO

Eric Lefevre-Ardant — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 12:21:25 +0000

On March 18th, I received the following email: On 18 March 2012 16:26, Jen Rhee <thisisjenica@gmail.com> wrote: Hi Eric, I came across your site and wanted to share my infographic about Wikipedia and how it’s redefining the way we research. … Continue reading →

Io Language: adding slots to messages

Eric Lefevre-Ardant — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:08:49 +0000

Week 2 of the Seven Languages in Seven Weeks book is about the Io Language. Day 3 is more specifically on how the flow of control (how messages are passed to an object or to its parent) can be hijacked … Continue reading →

Create hidden files in Apache VFS with the RAM filesystem type

Eric Lefevre-Ardant — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:57:47 +0000

Apache VFS is a great way to access different file systems in the same way. I particularly like the custom RAM filesystem in my unit tests in order to check code that eventually accesses the actual file system. For example: … Continue reading →

Cleaning up test code

Eric Lefevre-Ardant — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:52:03 +0000

My former colleague David just posted an example of verbose test code on his blog (the parts in French have been translated to English by myself): /** * */ @Test public void testGetCustomerOK() { LOGGER.info("======= testGetCustomerOK starting..."); try { CustomerDTO … Continue reading →

More data on productivity of small teams

Eric Lefevre-Ardant — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:44:17 +0000

“Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later”. The so-called Brooks’s Law on productivity of software project is well known, since Fred Brooks’ seminal work The Mythical Man-Month, first published in 1975. That is one of the reasons … Continue reading →