Everything is fine with JavaScript – hold on, I know, this is a Java blog! But it’s okay. Trust me. This post says a lot about JavaScript – but a lot of it is also very transferable to the Java ecosystem. One headline stands out: “If someone is holier-than-thou about technology choices, they’re wrong and you should ignore them.” (Notice how carefully I’m avoiding bringing up, say, MySQL or JSF here.)
From r/java: Externalizor says that it is a library for “efficient (fast and small) Java serialization using Externalizable interface.” No analysis provided of the potential security risks, and there’s no description of the format – but one nice thing about Externalizable is that the library allows users to leverage the standard Java serialization. (No comment on whether that is an actual good thing or not.)
User yawkat made a reference to JITWatch, a tool for understanding the behavior of the Java HotSpot Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler during the execution of your program. It’s not exactly trivial to use (you may have to use a debugging version of the JVM – see the instructions) but the information can be really cool.