Ryan Tomayko

It’s Faster Because It’s C —

That argument debunked for most real world applications.

I liked the way different types of boundedness were presented:

• I/O-bound. Completing a unit of work earlier just means waiting longer for the next block/message.
• Memory-bound. Completing a unit of work earlier just means more time spent thrashing the virtual-memory system.
• Synchronization-bound (i.e. non-parallel). Completing a unit of work earlier just means waiting longer for another thread to release a lock or signal an event – and for the subsequent context switch.
• Algorithm-bound. There’s plenty of other work to do, and the program can get to it immediately, but it’s wasted work because a better algorithm would have avoided it altogether.

As much as I agree with the thrust of the article, C programs really are faster in real life, but I think it’s because people who program in C are more likely to be familiar with common performance problems and tradeoffs. It’s hard not to be at that level.

Twitter / OpenSource —

Big list of open source projects Twitter developers contribute to. I really like the way this page presents things. It would be really cool if every user on GitHub automatically had a page like this somewhere.

"In practice, nothing works." —

From the apparently just published, Coders at Work (Apress, 2009), Brad Fitzpatrick Talks About Programming:

In practice, nothing works. There are all these beautiful abstractions that are backed by shit. The implementations of libraries that look like they could be beautiful are shit. And so if you’re the one responsible for the cost of buying servers, or reliability – if you’re on call for pages – it helps to actually know what’s going on under the covers and not trust everyone else’s library, and code, and interfaces. (…)

They should have titled the book, “In Practice, Nothing Works”. Anyway, you can grab the — ick — PDF ebook for $20 on Apress.

Enterprise static files —

This reddit comment makes me wish lesscode.org was still around :)

“By installing Java, you will be able to experience the power of Java” —

Funniest thing I’ve seen on Joel on Software in quite some time.

cachet —

Nick Kallen has started a project to implement a HTTP cache in Scala. Seems like an excellent idea given Java’s extensive collection of stable HTTP server libraries and Scala’s strengths in concurrency and performance.

Just add scaling! —

“I still haven’t found anyone who knows how you implement Scaling in a language, so I guess that LRM will never have it… Anyone who care to enlighten me, please send me a detailed email with an implementation of Scaling.”

A run-time for “the New Reality” —

“… the ‘new reality’ is the realization that Dynamic Scripting Languages are ready for prime-time and that REST is a simple, yet scalable architecture to build a servers on.” – I’d say that’s definitely a new reality for the enterprise, Bill.

Multiprocess versus Multithreaded ... or why Java infects Unix with the Windows mindset —

Erik Engbrecht: “Java took cheap Unix processes and made them expensive. To compensate, it provided primitives for multithreading.”

Mistaking Cons for Pros —

chromatic on million-line Java programs: “I can only imagine how much larger the Java code would be without all of those XML files.”

Scientists fight to save the last Java gibbons —

I thought this was a computer programming related article … buh-zing!

James Gosling Supports Closures in Java —

“Closures were left out of Java initially more because of time pressures than anything else. Closures, as a concept, are tried and true – well past the days of being PhD topics.”

Websphere CTO Jerry Cuomo on REST & Project Zero —

Whoa. I apparently haven’t spent nearly enough time looking into IBM’s Project Zero. It seems to come down to REST + (Groovy|PHP) and sneaking practical technologies in the front door with a “SOA” label on it. Interesting strategy.

Shipping Means Prioritizing —

“No important software for the Mac depends on Java.”

The ESB Question —

This is a scary description of a small chunk of my tech career: “In a previous life, I helped develop ESBs. I’ve written about them and I’ve promoted them. But somewhere along the way, I lost the religion.”

Rails, the 15 minutes is Almost Up. Meet Erlang. —

“Every time some Rails fanboy starts peddling their hype, the approved thing to do is to respond with Erlang.” – Brilliant idea! That will bring some real substance to the argument.

Sun’s Ruby strategy - Engage and Contain? —

“Maybe I’ll start to believe when they start promoting Ruby on Rails at JavaOne, as opposed to promoting JRuby on Rails at RailsConf.”

Obie Fernandez : Ruby on Rails and More... —

“I’m not really much into evangelizing Ruby and Rails much nowadays. You know, since we won, I have to admit that it became boring and besides the point.” :)

Sun surprises at RailsConf Europe 2007 [loudthinking.com] —

“‘Why are they doing all this?’, that’s a common concern with most Ruby folks … A Sun that’s heavily involved with Rails on the software side is a Sun that’s much better positioned to sell loads of hardware …”

Java Native Access + JRuby = True POSIX [headius.blogspot.com] —

Java becomes 100% more viable. So simple — why didn’t someone do this in the very beginning?

Java's Overton Window [blog.case.edu] —

Oh, wow. Have we come that far, then?

Bill de hÓra: Design for the web —

“… on Java, too many web frameworks – think JSF, or Struts 1.x – consider the Web something you work around using software patterns. The goal is get off the web, and back into middleware…”

JRuby 1.0 Released! [headius.blogspot.com] —

Rock on.

Charles Nutter - Big Plans [headius.blogspot.com] —

“And yes, I’ve seen the Microsoft news … If Sun did something like this I’d resign.”

Does JavaFX Spell The End Of AJAX? —

Is anyone actually falling for this crap? “‘The goal is to make it so people never have to see code’, said Gosling.” — Gag Me!

Running Ruby in the browser via script type="text/ruby" —

I no longer think applet support should be dropped from all major browsers. I’ve got links for anyone who produces a Jython version.

Type Inference: Another Bad Idea for Java 7 [cafe.elharo.com] —

“Type inference actually makes some sense in languages like JavaScript and PHP that are built around this, and had this feature from day 1. It makes no sense in a language that’s built around the opposite. It makes Java look weakly typed, but it isn’t

Koranteng's Toli: Crawl Before You Walk —

On JSF: “Waiting 5 years before you adopt the native architecture of the web is almost inexcusable. The web won’t (and didn’t) wait that long.”

Invasion Of The Dynamic Language Weenies [hacknot.info] —

Wow. Pretty solid anti dynamic language advocacy piece. It’s been a while since I’ve written anything longish so maybe I’ll try to put together something of response to this.

Q&A: James Gosling, 'father of Java' —

Wow. I’m nodding yesly to almost everything said by Gosling in this article. Weird. Here’s a good one: “The number one biggest threat to enterprises is the inherent fallibility and laziness of humans.”

Agile Enterprise Architecture: Why I Can't Take Smalltalk Seriously —

These people are still around? Amazing. Ooohhh, “tens of thousands of simultaneous users” — scary! scary!

XRuby Already Faster Than Ruby 1.8.5? —

“… the results for YARV/Rite are still streets ahead in terms of raw performance, and where I’m placing my bets for the next de facto Ruby interpreter.”

Sun proposes to apply Web service standardization principles to REST —

Elliotte isn’t pulling any punches :)

The BileBlog: Good riddance, Marc Fleury. —

“What Fleury contributed to the world of Java is a personality; love him or hate him, the man certainly deserved to be hated.”

Mr. Gosling - why did you make URL equals suck?!? —

Wow. Much worse than I thought.

In Which I Think About Java Again, But Only For A Moment —

“… but I gave up after optimizing AWT, implementing drag and drop, and trying to make 1,200 pages of crappy APIs do the right thing on the Mac. Then I took a one-week Cocoa training course, and wrote the first prototype of iChat.”

Are we gonna bash Restlet next? [brandonwerner.com] —

I’ve been meaning to spend some time in Restlet for some time now. Looks like it’s gaining traction with the EE crowd. Err, well, uhh, some of the EE crowd, anyway.

Software Development: Simplicity tops the agenda [infoworld.com] —

We won on my birthday :)

The perils of avoiding heresy (or "What are Design Patterns") —

In fact rather than being subtitled “Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software”, it should have been “21 reasons C++ sucks; 1 embarassment; and an Abstract Syntax Tree”.

Programmer Hierarchy —

Ranks programmers by who they consider themselves superior to. Comedy.

Why do so many reddit users hate java? (reddit.com) —

“Java’s solution to the problem of C++ allowing you to blow your foot off was to chop off your legs.”

Dynamic Language Support on the JVM —

Danny Coward Q/A on invokedynamic and “hot swapping” (method replacement). Pretty good piece until the end where we enter into some scary Java-static-typing-is-good-because-it-let’s-you-publish-APIs non-sense.

Programming Languages are like Women —

This guy gets around…

Ruby for the Web! (irb running in an applet via JRuby) —

I take back everything bad I’ve ever said about Java Applets ;)

GPL Java: An interview with lead Kaffe developer Dalibor Topic —

Good perspective on Java going GPL.

J2EE SUCKS HUGE DONKEY BALLS. —

“Then they spend one day debugging shit that’s gone wrong with Eclipse (or its mangling of the CVS repository, or some ant dependency problem, or)… And meanwhile they whine that 256 megs of RAM isn’t enough to edit a fucking text file (and do NOTHING el

Shell script awk csv file —

“I could whip you up something in Java that would take 2 minutes to design, 30 minutes to implement, a day to write the deployment descriptor for, and 3 months to get sign off from the app support people at the client site _b”

java sucks —

let’s go back to ‘97

LAMP and J2EE competition heating up —

it seems the tech press is only about a month behind the bloggers now… :)

Generics Considered Harmful —

Ouch! It would have been so much cooler if Java would have just dropped static typing completely.. :)

Java6 delightful new features —

The Sun bashing posts today are superb!

Bill de hÓra: No more nails: making good technology choices —

That’s what I’m saying bro..

Okay, James Gosling isn't really this ignorant... —

Yes he is! He seems to not understand even fundamental F/OSS licensing concepts and always throws up that same “Open Source = everyone can check in anything” strawman.

The History of Sampling —

Why free culture is important – in a java applet.

Checked Exceptions are Fundamentally Flawed —

It’s a shame Java doesn’t have higher order functions and it’s a good thing Java doesn’t higher order functions.

New Lisp book on the shelves —

Why Java developers should buy “Practical Common Lisp”.

TheServerSide changing focus —

HARDYFUCKINGHARHAR! Laugh it up you dumb shits. This might have been funny were Ruby and PHP not eating your lunch.

"Closed Open Source" —

Superb rant against Sun’s licensing tactics and especially Gosling’s cluelessness wrt what’s important in a license.

Reports of Java developers becoming addicted to Ruby programming —

The line forms to the left people..

Doing Java Without Java —

More dynamic language play on the Java front.

Project Coyote —

Tim Bray on the dynamic language push at Sun.

I *heart* Rails —

Author of “Better, Faster, Lighter Java” compares building MVC webapps in Java to building them in Rails. I wish I could say I was surprised at the results but I’m not…

Microsoft to Demo at EclipseCon 2005! —

wtf: “Visual Studio lead program manager Jason Weber to show how to build extensions for Microsoft’s IDE.”

JBoss Killed Hunter S Thompson —

Another reason to hate JBoss. :)

First Video Game Written In Ant —

For christ sakes, man! I hope Hani doesn’t ever see this…

Struts Flow: Continations come to Struts —

Right on. All roads lead to Lisp.

The HotSpot source code is a bad joke —

Oh, my. 3 Millions lines of C++, awk, sed, and scheme! “lets make everything OOP and add 100 layers” style. This is an instant classic.

To Evil! Feb '05 Edition —

Tales of cruftiness in Sun’s Hotspot JVM code and a nice look at some of crap attached to their SCSL license (like not being able to talk about the cruft JVM code).

How To Write Unmaintainable Code —

“In the interests of creating employment opportunities in the Java programming field, I am passing on these tips from the masters on how to write code that is so difficult to maintain, that the people who come after you will take years to make even the si

Eclipse Java-GNOME Demo —

Demo of 100% free Java/Eclipse natively compiled with gcj. This is slated for Fedora Core 4.

How Groovy Lost its Groove Thang —

Interesting look at how Groovy has been floundering for quite some time now under the JSR process. I wasn’t aware of any of this..

Open-Source Java Under Consideration —

Hmmm.. Maybe the confirmed “three letter part” referred to: “S” “U” “N”?

Java get/set - not that harmful —

Bill de hÓra challenges some of the points I made in Getters/Setters/Fuxors. Specifically, the getter/setter bloat and IDE comparisons. Some good points here.

Blue Sky Development —

Well written line-of-though writeup on the decision process leading up to a language selection when the sky is blue and you’re building a new app. Hint: Python :)

Bruno Souza to Sun: "Stop Saying That 'Our Implementation Is Open Source,' It Is Not" —

Right. The issue is the (lack of) redistribution rights, not whether the source is available. Free Linux distros cannot ship Sun’s Java (or IBM’s by extension). Lastly, Bruno needs a spell-checker.. bad.

The groovy sinking ship —

Hani at his finest, lambasting the Groovy project and the Dynamic Java meetup.

Dynamic Java —

Oh Tim, how I love thee. Let me count the ways..

Java is not Python, either... —

Nope.

Planet Classpath —

GNU Classpath (GPL’d J2SE implementation) hacker weblogs.

JUnit Bible Thumpers —

Hani on JUnit. priceless..

Jakarta Struts CVS Repository

Jetspeed 1.5 API —

Jetspeed 1 Enterprise Portal 1.5 API

J2SE 1.4.2 —

Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition, v 1.4.2 API Specification

JBoss panties around ankles, again. —

Hani breaks the story of JBoss' astroturf campaign.

Commons-io: By retards, for retards —

Hani disects commons-io

JRoller: Continuing a fine tradition of sucking —

Hani on upgrading to new version of JRoller.

More inmates running the asylum —

Hani on JSR-170..

JavaOne day one yawnfest

The BileBlog —

Ahh.. Hani’s back. I’ll run through and back fill my favorite bile.

Backdoor dynamic languages —

Ted Leung explores recent developments that seem to suggest that both Sun and Microsoft might be thinking about hijacking Python. If Jython and IronPython grow large followings, the library support has split three ways: Standard Python Libraries, Java Lib

The Python Paradox —

More Python love from Mr. Paul Graham.

Notes on Axis fault handling —

Axis fault handling is essentialy undocumented, at least anywhere I could find. I spent the better part of the last two days experimenting so I could understand how to properly do some error handling.

Everything I need to know about EJB I learned from watching Bugs Bunny

New Ant 1.6 Features for Big Projects