Tag: maven

Interesting Links, 1 Mar 2016

Happy March 1, it’s April Fool’s Day! Oh, wait…

  • From ##java itself: Anthaas_> 99.7% of people who say C++ is faster are not capable of using the highly-skilled techniques required to make that true. Now, about how he collected the data to validate that statement…
  • Gradle.org posted “Gradle vs Maven Feature Comparison“, with a description of “At long last, a comprehensive feature comparison of Maven vs Gradle that shows in detail what Build Automation requires in the Age of Continuous Delivery.” Surprisingly – or not – Gradle comes out well ahead, but most of the features sound more useful than they actually are for most users. (Until, that is, you really need that feature.)
  • Maven Testing Module describes using a Maven module solely for holding resources used for testing. It’s a module that’s included in other project modules at test scope; it has the testing frameworks and other dependencies in it, so your other modules will no longer be cluttered by test resources or artifacts. Cool idea. (For example, you can put H2 in your test project, along with some stored procedures and a test schema for it, and import them into your application for validation… just kidding, avoid stored procedures unless they’re used for every last bit of your data manipulation. And don’t do that.)
  • Heinz Kabutz is back, with “Checking HashMaps with MapClashInspector” – which walks through some of the things you should, and could, think about when designing hash codes for your objects. Highly recommended. Precis: “Java 8 HashMap has been optimized to avoid denial of service attacks with many distinct keys containing identical hash codes. Unfortunately performance might degrade if you use your own keys. In this newsletter we show a tool that you can use to inspect your HashMap and view the key distribution within the buckets.”
  • Of course the announcement propagates right after the links get published… but Flyway 4.0 has been released. This is a database migration tool – if your schema changes during development (or for any other reason), tools like Flyway are beyond valuable in terms of keeping your schema versioned. Highly recommended. The main alternative to Flyway is Liquibase – that’s not an endorsement of either project, just a plea to save your devops people by using tools designed to help them, instead of making them issue manual SQL to update a schema.

Interesting Links, 24 Feb 2016

It’s been a while, and I’m pretty sure I missed some fun stuff, but here goes with a few things:

  • Blogger Sam Atkinson has a few here, some good, some bad. I admire his proclivity.
    • “Don’t Rewrite Your Old Application; Refactor!” has some advice for people migrating to new products. It’s got some good thinking in it (rewriting is going to miss stuff, it’s going to take longer than you think) but not a lot of deep reasoning (and misses some possible points, like the resentment from the original architects which has happened to me when I tried to rewrite rather than refactor). Good post.
    • Then there’s “Kill Your Dependencies: Java/Maven Edition“, which says not to introduce dependencies until you have no other choice. That’s not terrible advice on the surface, but … it’s terrible advice. Use what you need. If wasting 3MB of disk space gets you one method from a library that saves you time to write or think or test, well, that 3MB of space is cheaper than you are. YMMV, but it’s not good advice – worth reading, though.
  • jOOQ‘s “The Mute Design Pattern” shows how you can use Java 8’s lambdas to hide checked exceptions for situations where you Just Don’t Care, leading to code like mute( () -> { doStuff(); } ) — which is actually pretty neat. Very handy to have in your coding toolbox, much like Binkley‘s “Java 8 AutoCloseable trick“.

By the way, feel free to send in stuff you think belongs here!