I’ll keep this site around to serve old links.

My last post was a bit terse, so I thought I’d spruce things up a bit.  With real words, anyway.  I’ve started to settle in a bit.  I rode the Muni subway train home all by myself.  I squashed 1.75 software bugs today, too, a new high in my three-day career.

What’s Square like?  A little surreal, for a Midwestern boy, but that may be a bit of San Francisco showing.  A day begins with a silent office, just like anywhere else.  Over the next two to three hours, people filter in slowly.  At some point breakfast shows up.  (I had bagels and lox today.  Or, some kind of fish.  Another day I had something made out of walnuts and lingonberries.)  All the while, folks are working through their tasks.  There is a lot to do for a product with so much focus.

Lunch arrives at around 11:30, 11:45, or so, and often folks will gather in clumps and take a break.  Today we had a guest speaker (Abdur Chowdhury) from Twitter come in and give some perspective on how abusers think and work.  A cool part of the day was when Jack Dorsey gave a quick shout of “Hey, Square!” to announce the presentation.  The room went silent.  He’s trained us well.

It’s a pretty good place to be a developer.  If you set aside the noise, by will or by headphone, you can concentrate on your task and get a lot done.  Meetings are short and direct, more often than not only involving two or three folks for a minute.  Longer tasks may involve two people from different teams pairing up to solve a problem.

I’m also glad to be back in a strong code review regime.  Every piece of code is reviewed and approved.  This may be while pairing, or by working on an issue branch and sending out to the team for a look.  Very nice.  A good way to learn the standards and conventions, and a whole lot of git.

I’m slowly learning the ropes on the mac, finding things, turning things on or off, figuring out the keyboard, etc.  But that’s another post for another day.  I brought along another Dresden Files novel…

I love apple.  You?  Apple very Square, yet not square!  Tasty, and not tasty.

And so on.  Here are some very quick impressions from almost two days.

• Square
  • Fun, fast-paced.
  • Cramped in the current SF office, moving soon.
  • Growing very fast.
  • Very awesome food.
• Macbook
  • (I’ll have to do a detailed post on this…)
  • Missing lots of keys
  • Unintelligible key combo hints in menu
  • Edges are a bit sharp
  • OS is so-so, very stuck on WIMP,I’m surprised there’s not more innovation here
  • Touchpad is enormous.  And borderline non-functional.
  • I’ve got Ubuntu in a VirtualBox and I’m loving it.
• Intellij Idea
  • In one singular case (extract method), it actually seemed smarter than Eclipse.
  • The rest, surprisingly so-so.
  • Missing flyovers of, well, everything.  Sometimes a man likes to hover without touching anything.
  • Wildly misleading web documents for Mac users.
  • Manages to have more property pages than Eclipse.
  • Is getting replaced by Eclipse soon, perhaps this evening.

First, a quick note:  Yes, I still use Firefox as my default browser.  It works, it is extensible, and I’ve never had performance problems with it.  Yes, Chrome is out there, but every time I’ve tried it, it is broken in various ways (spellchecking, for one) and the UI decisions in it are perplexing.

And to my dearly departed extensions:  you may still be installed, but you got left behind and I can’t use you:

• Google Notebook
• InstantAction Game Launcher
• Quick Preference Button
• Reveal
• TagSifter
• UrlParams
• WebDAV Launcher

Maven 102: Advanced Basics

Alternate title:  What you need to do to be a good Maven citizen

Java module layout

Here is the default layout for a java/jar maven module.  You can reconfigure source and output directories, but you may not want to, as I’ll discuss in a second.

source/input directories:

src/main/java
src/main/resources
src/test/java
src/test/resources

output directories:

target
target/classes
target/test-classes

Build Flow

A general flow for Maven in such a project would be to:

1. compile src/main/java to target/classes
2. copy src/main/resources to target/classes
3. compile src/test/java to target/test-classes
4. copy src/test/resources to target/test-classes
5. run unit tests, output to target/surefire-reports
6. build jar, source jar, and test jars, place in target

Again, you can change much of this, but with Maven, the more you fight with it, the more you will have to fight with it.  It kind of snowballs and will cause annoyances down the line, during releases and documentation and site generation and such.

Repositories

It is not terrible to set up a repository, but the holy grail (for the users, anyway) is to get your libraries uploaded to Maven Central — this will make the process quite seamless for adding a new compiler to a project because access to Maven Central is basically required for Maven operation.

Custom Language Compilation

Another important task for easy maven integration is compilation.  This will generally require a special maven plugin that can essentially execute  the custom language compiler and conform to something similar to the input and output directories above.  This is not too tricky, especially if there is a java entry point to do the work.

Modularity

Related to this is a topic of modularity:  how do you break up a project?  How do you resolve circular references across multiple langugaes? For example, you will generally get yourself into trouble if you have:

src/main/java
src/main/netrexx
src/main/javafx

all in the same module, and are trying to compile them all at once.  Unless you have a single compiler that can process all your source at once, this won’t work.  You will be far happier to make multiple modules, use maven to describe the dependencies, and do one language at a time.

Swing, James Bond, interface design, Dresden, an Elizibethan England children’s novel, and more — it’s all good.

We have lots of technologies and practices for remote communication.  Some examples from Java: RPC, home-grown sockets, serialization, RMI, CORBA, XML, REST, DTOs, SOAP, and many more.

What’s the one thing consistent about all of those?  99% of the time, I DON’T CARE! I want to be able to send data to and from a server quickly and consistently.  How the data gets de-rezzed and rezzed in the meantime matters to the end product only a tiny bit.  (sorry, only good video I could find, watch :10 through :45 for what I mean — and hope you like Depeche Mode)

These are really cool technologies, and fascinating to dive into for their own sake.  But when I’m trying to deliver software, I don’t want to worship at a particular altar, it just doesn’t matter.  You can typically accomplish any requirements using any of the technologies, but we so often just start waving techs around as a panacea instead of looking closely at the problem.

Example: We just had a client-server app using RMI with Spring Remoting‘s HttpInvoker.  Were we having troubles with too much data being sent from the server, and being tied to the same version of domain objects on client and server, having trouble with releasing.  (A Detailed analysis here, from a former architect on the team.)  We solved this by switching to RESTful web services all over.  We have specific data being sent down, and no longer depend upon the same module for domain objects.

Now, take a look at the problem and the solution.  We weren’t having a problem of how we sent the data over, we were having a problem of what we were sending.  We could have fixed that in place, using RMI, using a common module, with a couple of tweaks (managing serialization and not releasing domain, client, and server simultaneously).  Instead, we spent several man-months (I might dare to say close to a year of time) converting our modules, dealing with any RESTEasy quirks, and arguing over URIs.  And now we have 2-3 extra copies of objects in client, server, and web modules.

In the end, things are improved, and these problems are solved.  In fact, following REST patterns basically forced us to confront the problems.  I am glad we are where we are, we’ve gone to something more text- and test-friendly, all with just a browser.  But it wasn’t REST that fixed our problems — we did.

Documentation and Tutorials

What is Android? — Quick start on architecture .

Application Fundamentals — Terminology and Components

Hello, World tutorial — very basic tutorial

Notepad tutorial — nice tutorial with “problems” to work though, as well as a clear goal.  Demonstrates different parts of an app’s lifecycle.

Development Set-Up

You’ll have to go through several steps to get a fully working development environment.  Start with the Android SDK.  Download to somewhere reasonable, then cd into {android’s home}/tools and run android.  This brings up the SDK/AVD manager, which can pull down samples, documentation, and runtime environments for the different Android versions.  It also is where you set up and launch the device emulators.

Get the Eclipse plug-in for Android next, if you like that sort of thing.  Be sure to configure the SDK location in your preferences.  Note that you can launch the SDK/AVD manager right out of Eclipse, if you like.  If you don’t want to use the plug in, be sure to check the documentation for the command-line tools, which can do many (if not all) of the Eclipse plugin’s functions.

There’s a little agile in there, relating to software design minimalism.  That’s not what I’m getting at.  Whether you are developing something new, or fixing something broken, deliver the very least you must for the desired outcome.

I did not say to do the least amount of work required, I said deliver the very least required; go quickly and completely in the direction you must move.  Destroy that bug, hack that web page, do something terrible and glorious.  After getting it working, though, take that next step, and wash all the mud off what you just did.  That is, minimize the actual changes you’re about to apply.  Make sure every change makes sense and is required.  Don’t lump another change or some code reformatting in just for “because it needs to be done eventually”.  Focus on only what you are doing.

It is a massive accomplishment to delete code from a working system and still have a working system.  It is thrilling, and you’ve saved yourself and “the next guy” a lot of trouble in the future.  This applies whether you are fixing a bug or making something completely new.

A quick search revealed several hacky things, but when I read Rakesh Menon’s Always On Top post to the end, I found the tidbit I needed:  java.awt.Frame.getFrames().  It’s a static method that lists all AWT frames in use by the system.  So, for as long as JavaFX uses AWT/Swing (not too much longer, apparently), we can use that.  Here’s the code to get your Stage as a Frame, all above-board.  What you do with it is up to you.

function getFrame(frameName:String):java.awt.Frame {
    var frames = java.awt.Frame.getFrames();
    for(frame in frames) {
        if (frameName == frame.getTitle()) {
            return frame
        }
    }
    return null;
}

I’ve spent a lot of time on the boxes, and unfortunately, the time I spent fixing seems to have eclipsed the time I spent playing.

The thing I’ve found most fascinating about the process is that, while buggy, the 360 hardware is quite resilient.  With enough twiddling of screws, I can get a box up and running quite consistently.

The Company was pleased with our performance last year.  So they went against everything we’ve been teaching our kids, and gave us candy pills.

That’s Jelly beans on the left, mints on the right.  Or so I hope.

One bad thing about Buzz: Those replies are on the Buzz server, not here.

I’ll try to scale back the user requirements for posting, as I have gotten complaints about that.  But if spam gets too high, I’ll have to turn it back on.

Another way of putting it is that I’m ashamed of the state of our industry, in these cases.  It may be inertia, or the teams I’m on, or anything, but I still have to fight it, understand it.  These things are what we should be laughing about, when talking about the bad old days.

I have some thing swirling in my head… part of this may be the continuation of the Java Build Systems posts I had earlier, and more.  Next two entries, I think: Java and ORM, Java and the Web.

• How Gamestop ruined my Valentine’s Day
• Gamestop Made Me Do It
• I’m an Idiot

The wife lovingly bought me a copy of Mass Effect 2 for Valentines Day.  In fact, she told me she was going to, hence my desire to get my Xbox working.  She gives it to me, and the first thing out of my mouth is “Oh, you bought this used?  I’ll have to pay $15 to be able to download the free stuff for it.”

I always do this.  My wife could buy me the coolest toy, phone, gadget, or netbook, and I’ll mention how much I like it, and oh did you see the deal on it last week where it was half off?  I make the lovely wife feel like an idiot, and the gift seem cheap and poorly thought-out.

That’s my personal demon to remove.  The real enemy here?  Gamestop, for knowingly selling my wife a game for $55 (a five-dollar discount off new retail price) without even mentioning this to her.  They made a ton of money off the deal, probably way more than they would have from selling the game new.  It was very well publicized in gaming circles that this was coming down the line, there’s no way they were innocent.

I’m putting them on my list of most hated companies.  Companies I won’t go to or buy from.  Congrats, guys — you just joined the ranks of Best Buy and Sony!

I just picked up three books on Design, based largely on the recommendations in the JavaPosse Roundup 09 sessions on the topic.  I haven’t read them yet, but just perusing them makes them look to be a lot of fun.  First, the Amazon links:

1. The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
2. Don’t Make Me Think!  A common sense approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug
3. The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams

Everyday Things is actually about physical, industrial design, but a lot of the anecdotes, photographs, and diagrams seem to apply just as well to software design.  The Design Book steps a bit closer to my familiar software realms by covering general graphic design principles, largely for print media.  It covers the basics of Proximity, Alignment, Repetition, and Contrast, and a host of other things including color and type (font to us normals).  And lastly, Don’t Make Me Think! covers style and web patterns.  It has juicy bits on brevity, breadcrumbs, scanning patterns, and tons more.

I can’t wait!  Practical design has always been something I like.  I want to learn the best patterns.

Oops, it happened again.  There’s no free lunch this time.  Even if I paid the $100 to MS to repair it, they would only give a 90 day warranty on their work.  So, either buy a new one (with a massive extended warranty, of course) or try to fix it myself.  After attempting to buy a new Arcade unit for $200 at K-Mart twice, but failing both times because they were out of stock, I went the fix route.

Oooh, that’s a dark and scary part of the internet.  Everyone’s trying to sell you their $40 guide on how to fix it like the pros.  Plus they tout how their guides are not scams (a good indication of scamminess), and how they will make you a better person.  I kept digging, though, and found help on my brother‘s recommendation:

YouTube – How To Fix the Red Ring of Death #1 (Penny Trick)

It actually worked.  I used the video as a general guide.  The only thing I had to do “off the books” was convince the xbox to get out of the three red rings mode.  I’m not sure I did this the best way, but I unplugged the fan and powered up for about 2 minutes.  Even though the three red rings keep flashing, all the parts warm up decently (but can get too warm, that’s the part I’m not sure about). After a 30-minute cooldown, the xbox booted just fine.

Along the way, I came across these other reputable/useful links:

• Fixing without towels
• Llamma’s X-Clamp fix
• X-Clamp fix 2
• Mario’s Repair Guide

I played Gears of War 2 for 30 minutes, no problems.  It logs onto Xbox Live just fine.  And, we’ve gone through the movie Dinosaur today with no issues.  Perhaps it will live long enough for me to play up some Mass Effect 2!

Update:  Not long enough for all of Mass Effect 2… see also this new post.

This is my current gold-standard set of podcasts:

Podcast / RSS Link	Category	Average Length	Description
Major Nelson Radio	Gaming	1:15 - 2:00	Gaming podcast, focussed almost exclusively on the Xbox 360. Interviews and news.
IGN Games Podcasts	Gaming	0:40 - 1:15	I listen to the following podcasts from this RSS: Game Scoop (all around gaming news) Three Red Lights (ostensibly 360, often silly) Nintendo Voice Chat (Wii / DS) Command Prompt (PC Gaming)
IGN Entertainment Podcasts	Television / Movies / Technology	0:40 - 1:00	I only currently listen to Channel Surfing, but occasionally there are other interesting podcasts
Bungie Podcast	Gaming	1:30 - 2:00	Bungie studios talking mostly about Halo. Note: Not bleeped, not filtered.
Anger, Sadness, Envy	Gaming	1:15 - 1:45	Rampancy.net's podcast discussing all things halo. Fun deep dives into story and gameplay.
The Dealnews Podcast	Technology, Consumer News	0:40 - 1:00	A medium-length, somewhat lighthearted take on tech news and product deals.
The Java Posse	Programming	1:00 - 1:30	Java and JVM news and sessions

Here are some podcasts I’ve just started listening to and am still evaluating:

This could be a cool way to develop/test the GamesByEmail game I’ve been fiddling with, perhaps.  I don’t think code-completion is in there, yet, which will ultimately be a must-have, but I can play for now…

Big bonus:  the editor is high-performance, and is implemented with my favorite, the HTML5 Canvas tag.  See also my experiments right here (I’d recommend planetaryZ2, and don’t forget to mouseover/click a planet).

There is some work going on integrating eclipse with this… not sure exactly what, yet, though.  See Eclipse in the Cloud and E4/Bespin.

• buff
• debuff
• tank
• aggro
• DPS
• AoE
• Bonus:
  • Tapping
  • Untap

In some cases, you may even be fooling yourself that you’re playing a game.  Seriously, though, I’m a nerd, and listening to people talk like the above makes me want to take their lunch money.

The discussion that spawned this was an article on Slashdot about breaking up some of these concepts, so that MMOs don’t all end up the same.  I’m in full agreement… I want to have fun playing, and I want to at least pretend that it’s not all numbers in a computer somewhere.

(I had to throw in the M:tG terms just because playing that game causes you to talk especially nerdy.)