Chad
Developer Jack of all trades
Posts by Chad
Nov 24th
Bruce Eckel talks Scala
Jul 11th
Back in the day, Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel was the first real Java book I read. I was new to the language and needed lots of help. It was generally required reading for any self-respecting Java professional. The problem is, that was 11 years ago. For a stable industry, that seems like a long time. In software development, that’s ancient history. Ideas change, concepts evolve, and languages fall out of flavor. For better or for worse, change happens and it can be really fun if you embrace it. Bruce wrote a very compelling post on some of the advantages of Scala. He touched on code expressiveness, case classes, traits, functional programming, and a few other interesting concepts. It’s a great read and well worth your time. I’ve been a Scala fan for some time, but I was a fence sitter. I’d dip my toe in and if the water was too cold, I turn and run back to the safety of what I knew. It seems like there is now a critical mass behind Scala though. I’m hoping I can find a way to work it into my next project and get off the fence for good.
Back from hiatus
May 17th
I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus recently, but I should be back to posting soon. I switched projects and have been spending a lot of time cleaning up some big messes. I turned a nasty Eclipse right click/export build into something usable. We ended up with a sweet Maven/Nexus/Hudson build process. I’ve used Maven on a lot of projects and have a love-hate relationship with it. Dependency management is such a freeing experience, but I’m trying to cut down on the amount of time I spend with XML. I know Maven 3 has the ability to create poms with Groovy, but I haven’t gotten into that much. Instead, I’ve been using Gradle. It has all the advantages of dependency management without the legacy cruft. It took me a couple of days to understand what Gradle was doing and it’s still immature, but I think it has a bright future. Either way, Nexus has been the core product that has brought all of this together. Whether we are using Maven, Gradle, or Ant/Ivy, Nexus just keeps getting better and better. It’s one of those products that I find just “works”. I highly recommend it as the heart of a jvm build process. I’ve got a lot more to talk about in this space, so hopefully I can’t blog on that soon.
Scala Stuff
Oct 14th
I’ve been trying to spend a lot of my free time hacking on Scala. I love the language. It’s had a steep learning curve for me, but I’ve really enjoyed the trip. As you get into the language, you appreciate how it’s consistency can make complicated concepts seem simple. Here are some good links that helped me get started:
- Scala training slides: http://github.com/javaBin/scala-training-slides
- Dick Wall’s functional koans: http://github.com/relevance/functional-koans/tree/scala
- Scala for Java refugees: http://www.codecommit.com/blog/scala/roundup-scala-for-java-refugees
- Java Posse Roundup 2010 – Scala discussion: http://javaposse.com/java_posse_314_roundup_10_scala