Conny Lundgren's blog

JBoss AS 5 is here!

2008-12-05T07:51:14Z

The long awaited Jboss 5 Application Server is finally here, It seems to have been released just now since there are only 138 downloads of the binary.

Download here - http://www.jboss.org/jbossas/downloads/

Intellij IDEA 8 available

2008-11-07T19:22:37Z

I have been using the milestone for quite a while, and I believe there are huge improvements over the earlier versions.

Highlights in the 8.0 release are..

Languages & Frameworks

SQL-92, MySQL, SQLite with coding assistance and Console to run SQL scripts from the IDE
Template languages: FreeMarker, Velocity
XPath/XSLT, including XPath expression evaluation
Groovy/Grails with advanced editing, new refactorings and Gant
JBoss Seam
Struts 2
Spring 2.5
Spring Webflow
Spring MVC
Spring Dynamic Modules
GWT 1.5
RESTful WebServices

Features & Improvements

7 New Java Refactorings
Dataflow to This — see where an arbitrary parameter value comes from
Create new test for class intention and navigation between classes/tests
UML class diagrams with navigation to the source code and refactorings
Thread dump analyzer
Automatic namespace import for HTML/XML/JSP
JavaScript debugger
Flex debugger
Advanced Flex code editor for MXML and ActionScript files, with Flash 10 generics
Maven: create new module from archetype, Repository Browser, pom.xml validation and editing assistance
Subversion 1.5 merge tracking support

Download a 30day trial, or purchase a license here

Web Beans (JSR-299) draft available

2008-11-07T19:17:06Z

The JSR299 draft is now available for public review, have a look at it (and leave feedback)

http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=299

Your comments are welcomed, send them to jsr-299-comments@jcp.org

When is done really done?

2008-09-30T13:23:02Z

I don’t matter if you work agile or in waterfall (or any other “process” for that matter), one of the most important bits of practice a team (even if you are coding solo) should get in place is a Definition Of Done. The DoD should be very obvious to everyone involved, and if anyone (including yourself) tries to stray from the DoD they should be flogged in public (corporate policies may get in the way here..).

So why is this definition so important? Let us start with an example I encountered a while ago.

On one of my project there was this developer let us call him “Fred”, initially things were looking ok, he delivered what was promised, and on inspection the code looked OK (Fred was no wizard, but a fair developer).

Fred got the responsibility to implement a certain part of the project, and off he went, when asked about the progress there was always a good answer, like “I’m testing the implementation” or “I found a bug which I am current fixing”. Fred delivered his part of the application, and when integrated they didn’t work. How could that be? We had all seen him write unit-tests?
I sat down and asked Fred what he thought was wrong, and he told me his story. It turned out he had written a fairly large test suit, but when asked if it has ever been “working” I got shocked, Fred told me he had never actually run his test-suite, he had just wrote a whole bunch of test code, but never ever executed it.

Although this is an extreme case (nonetheless true), it shows how important it is to have a Definition of what done actually means. We often use the word done, but rarely define what it actually means.

Is a feature done when it compiles? When it is integrated? When it can run successfully? When you have 87.3% code coverage? All of these are possible interpretations of the same phrase.

It’s important for the whole team to have a shared idea of where the finishing is. Without that some will claim success and other defeat while talking about the same thing. So where do you begin? First, talk about it; it should be a collaborative exercise to define it.
Most often you will find the ideas varies, try to at least find a level everyone can agree to, if not you will easily end up in “almost done” mode again.

Gafter to Microsoft..

2008-09-29T14:27:55Z

Initially I found it hard to Believe, but it appears to be true that Neal Gafter one of the Java-rock star has joined Microsot. I wonder what this means to his Closures proposal.

Twitter:

“working on Microsoft Visual Studio Managed Languages with Anders Hejlsberg, on C# and other languages. “

Also confirmed by the latest Java Posse podcast (#208)