tools of the trade

Handy commands and shortcuts for folks who develop (Java) software for a living.

*nix
grep
cat
less
more
sort
uniq
sed
awk
wc
ls

All of these are bread-and-butter commands that when chained together allow you to get a lot of ad-hoc stuff done.

eclipse
- Alt-Shift-R - refactor for the var/method underneath the cursor
- Alt-Shift-X - run command short cuts to run tests, apps, etc quickly
- Ctrl-F7 - to cycle views
- Ctrl-F8 - to cycle perspectives
- the debugger's Display view which allows you to run Java expressions within the scope/context of the break-point the debugger is currently stopped at.
- conditional breakpoints: right click on the break point or select it in the breakpoint list, check the Conditional check box and enter the Java expression that will pause the execution when it evaluates to true.  this is a MUST for mutli-threaded development!
- Open Call Hierarchy: right click on a method and use this to see where in your code this method is being called.  I've found this to be very helpful when I'm working on a class that is used in multiple projects (currently open in the workspace of course).

maven
mvn dependency:tree -Dverbose
- shows a very helpful graph of defined and transitive dependencies (as maven sees them)

mvn versions:display-dependency-updates
- shows you which dependencies defined in your pom have updated versions.

mvn versions:display-plugin-updates
- same thing as the dependency flavor but for all the plugins configured in your poms.

misc.
- log4j configurations got you down? Put this JVM command line option in place to make log4j spit out lots of good debugging information: -Dlog4j.debug
- if you find yourself commenting a block of code, consider that you might actually need a function/method. (not sure who said it first but heard it in a code review and wanted to write it down ; )

Technical Debt

Just stumbled upon this and want to remember it for later =) It's an interesting way to explain the consequences of design & development short cuts made in the name of "time to market" among other things.

Technical Debt - http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2007/11/01/technical-debt-2.aspx

Goodbye Project Darkstar, Hello RedDwarf!

I was saddened to learn tonight that the game server that was being developed by Sun, called Project Darkstar, has become a causality of the Oracle acquisition. Oracle has decided to pull the plug on the project and, while I cannot say I am terribly surprised, I am quite disappointed. Had I been paying attention to my InfoQ emails I probably would have noticed sooner but instead I found out by trying to browse the forums and being told I'm now banned from them. Ack!

For those who don't know, Project Darkstar was an application server tailored towards large scale online gaming and virtual worlds. It was kind of like what the java enterprise servers do for business applications but engineered from the ground up for game programming (e.g. ultra low latency). It handles the back end server concerns of an MMORPG type application so the developers can focus on making a kick ass game.

Or a really crappy web based chat room where you can punch people like what I was working on when I found Darkstar about a year ago.

I am not a game developer by any stretch of the imagination but that is what made the idea of writing a game fun for me. While researching what it takes to support the server side of an on-line multiplayer game I stumbled upon Darkstar and found it to be exactly what I was looking for. It solved the back end problem for me, was agnostic towards the client technology, was open source with an active community and backed by Sun to boot. Perfect! I can buy into this and futz around with stupid CSS tricks, AJAX, servlets, etc. to my hearts content.

And of course Oracle decides to yank the project.

Fortunately for a fella like me, and many of the more serious game developers who invested time and money into Darkstar I'd imagine, one of the Darkstar developers, Owen Kellett, has alread created a community fork of the project called RedDwarf.

This is very cool to see. Same code, new name, thank you Owen and everyone who has helped get RedDwarf going!