Recent Software Development Posts of Interest - Early December 2011

I have run into several software development blog posts over recent weeks that I think are worth reading or keeping links to for future reference. I collect some of these in this post.

An apt Ending

In Java 8 news, Joseph D. Darcy's post An apt ending draws nigh reports that "after being deprecated in JDK 7, the apt command line tool and the entirely of its associated API is on track to be removed from JDK 8 within the next few months." I wrote about the apt tool in a Java SE 6 context in the article Better JPA, Better JAXB, and Better Annotations Processing with Java SE 6.

Devops

I'm still somewhat skeptical of the concept of devops (not the issues the movement is trying to resolve, but rather the movement itself and what it actually is and involves), but I also realize that I still understand very little about it. Neil McAllister is critical of the devops movement in the post Devops: IT's latest paper tiger, but I tend to agree with the majority of the sentiments he expresses in the post.

Matthias Marschall's post DevOps is NOT a Job Description states that "The DevOps hype produces some strange effects." Marschall states that DevOps is not about job ads and then goes on to describe what he believes DevOps is about (culture, automation, measurements, and sharing).

Oracle's Top Ten 2011 Java Moves and the Acquisition of Sun

The post Enterprise Applications: Oracle`s Top 10 Java Moves of 2011 outlines "some of the top Java moves Oracle has made in 2011." This is in slideshow format and includes the list and brief description of each item on the list. Some of the items include JDK 7, OpenJDK, JavaFX 2.0, NetBeans, Java EE 7, and Java/HTML 5 integration.

In How Oracle made the Sun deal work: a lesson for CFOs, Elizabeth Heichler quotes Oracle Chairman Jeff Henley describing Oracle's acquisition of Sun as "unequivocally the finest acquisition we've ever done."

Is 15 Years The Half Life of a Software Development Career?

Matt Heusser's post What I learned from Google - You Get Fifteen Years maintains that "your half-life as a worker in corporate America is about age thirty-five." He explains some reasons for this: "Around that time, interviews get tougher. Your obligations make you less open to relocation, the technologies on your resume seem less-current, and your ability find that next gig begins to decrease." Heusser states in this post that more experienced technology workers do have an advantage in that their experience gives them more opportunities to do a wider variety of work.

I have written previously about older software developers in the post My Thoughts on Thoughts on Developer Longevity I thought that Seth made good points in his feedback to that post. He pointed out that many more experienced developers have stopped job hopping and found deep niches to work in.

HTML5 Continues Its Winning Streak

In mid-November, Adobe announced its intent to attempt to give Flex to the Apache Software Foundation. This move, following Adobe's announcement to abandon future versions of the Flash Player for mobile devices, implies what Adone has explicitly stated: "In the long-term, we believe HTML5 will be the best technology for enterprise application development." Of course, Flash is not completely gone and HTML5 is not completely here yet as we're reminded by the post Five Things You Can’t Do With HTML5 (yet).

Gradle Links

I recently wrote that I'm starting to get very interested in Gradle for building Java projects. As I've looked at Gradle a little more closely since my interest started at JavaOne 2011, I have found several useful resources on Gradle that I list here for future reference. It is likely that I'll reference many of these posts again in future posts I write on Gradle, but here they are in one location.

• Thinking in Gradle!
• Using Gradle in Practice
• Gradle - Domain Specific Language Based Build Tool
• Using Gradle to Bootstrap your Legacy Ant Builds
• Gradle in NetBeans (Part 1)
• Building for Different Environments With Gradle
• Introduction to Gradle, Part 1
• Introduction to Gradle, Part 2
• Introduction to Gradle, Part 3
• Java Builds with Gradle
• Why Do I Like Gradle?

More Groovy

Several recent posts have provided different perspectives on use of Groovy. Neal Ford's Functional thinking: Functional features in Groovy, Part 1 discusses "how some functional programming has already crept into Groovy." Jakub Holý writes about use of Groovy in Java unit testing in his post Only a Masochist Would Write Unit Tests in Java. Be Smarter, Use Groovy (or Scala…). Tim Myer's post Programming with Groovy: Trampoline and Memoize point out that "Trampolining and memoization are two powerful new features in Groovy 1.8, but the combination of the two is not always straightforward." The post describes with descriptive text and code examples how to use these new Groovy 1.8 closure enhancements.

GroovyMag's News Roundup: Links for December 6 features a link to my post Compressing JPG Images with Groovy. There are several other interesting Groovy posts highlighted there as well, including Five Cool Things You Can Do With Groovy Scripts.

Reading List for JVM Developers

Thomas Lockney's post A Reading List for JVM-based Developers provides a "recommended reading list for developers who find themselves working in a JVM-based environment who need to understand the characteristics of that environment, particularly as it pertains to performance and concurrency issues." The list includes books and online sites. Some of the online resources include JSR-133 (Java Memory Model) FAQ and What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory.

"Lesser-known" Java Libraries

The reddit/java thread Nice lesser-known Java libraries provides several developers' opinions on "nice, lighweight and lesser known libraries solving various problems." Some of the referenced libraries include jcommander, FEST-Assert, jsoup, Project Lombok, and Guava. There is also a reference to the presentation Java Boilerplate Busters.