Knowledge

Hi folks. Today I want to write to you about learning something with a visual mind. There are a gazillion posts out there that tell you how to learn something with a visual mind. However, there are only a few actually describing how to learn something as complicated and logical as programming. How do you draw up a function? How do you draw up a cycle or a structure? Actually these are really easy. A cycle? No problem. What’s a circle if not a cycle? Structure? This should be an easy one. You can draw a whole building and then place building blocks into it. ...

So today at 8-12PM I had a great session with two friends of mine. It was awesome. Like a mini code retreat. We set down in a musky bar, drank wine and beer and cider, and decided to practice some TDD with the well known problem of Conway’s Game of Life. This challenge is really interesting. I never done it before, ever. So it was a really good practice for me. ...

Aka, what you can do if you are facing and unknown framework / system you have to work with for quite some time. Get intimate You are going to live with this system for a while. The best thing you can do is getting to know it better. You have to get it to know like you would approche a fine lady. You have to ask it questions look after it, how it feels how its day was. Have to listen to what it tells you, you have to read its diary if necessary. ...

My solution to the String Wrap Kata. The goal is to have it wrap a text on a given column width. It is not the best solution but this is my first try. I did it with TDD so there were tests first, which I’m not going to copy in.. public class WrapKata { public String wrap(String input, int columnSize) { if (input.length() <= columnSize) return input; else { return wrapLines(input, columnSize); } } private String wrapLines(String input, int columnSize) { int breakPoint = getBreakPoint(input, columnSize); String head = createHead(input, breakPoint); String tail = createTail(input, breakPoint); return head += "\n" + wrap(tail, columnSize); } private String createTail(String input, int breakPoint) { return input.substring(breakPoint).trim(); } private String createHead(String input, int breakPoint) { return input.substring(, breakPoint).trim(); } private int getBreakPoint(String input, int columnSize) { if (input.contains(" ")) { return input.lastIndexOf(' ', columnSize); } else { return columnSize; } } }

Hi everybody. Today I want to talk to you about.. Well.. How to read a professional book for slow learners without too much waste of time. Let us start at the. well. the beginning. How do you normally read a book if you want to memorize it properly. You read it once and then re read the whole thing again until it gets in your head? Or do you have another strategy? ...

Hi. Today I want to talk about a common problem in many frameworks I encountered over the course of my carrier as a Java dev / automation engineer, whatnot. Throwing Exceptions. That is in your method you have something like this: public void insertMethodNameHere(String param) throws Exception {} This is bad. And I will tell you in short forms why. Hides exceptions This one should be obvious. When a method throws exception you can never be sure what kind of exceptions it handles. It will hide what problems it can encounter. It will hide possible threats and will generally mean nothing to you when it fails. ...

Hi folks. I want to write a little bit about writing a professional blog. Early steps Let’s first talk about what you understand about professional blog. It’s either a semi professional one, that mixes life with professionalism, like chess, programming, testing, painting, drawing, engineering whatever your profession is. Or it can be a purely professional one without your life getting involved in it. Either way you have to decide at the beginning. Why? Because that’s the kind of people you will attract. If you want to attract people from your profession then you have to decide that you will write plenty of your profession into your blog. If you want to attract hobbists more then you write about your profession AND daily life or other situations that are essentially irrelevant. Of course you can get both in both versions but the numbers will be different. ...

Hi! I’ve seen this many times over and over again. Many people have wrote books about it already. Like Uncle Bob’s Clean Code. Like Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. What makes your code understandable to others. Is it Comments? No. It’s not comments. If your code could be read properly you wouldn’t need comments to explain what it does. Like Uncle Bob said. A good code doesn’t contain surprises. It does exactly what you would think it should do on the next line. It doesn’t have curves and misinformation. It doesn’t have plots and turns of events like a good crime book. No. Good code is a like a boring soap opera with predictable plot and boring plain characters who don’t change there behavior based on circumstances. ...

Hello chumps. Today I want to write about jms connection testing with a small framework. I wrote a small thing using a factory object model. It’s a lead, a proof of concept. You can use this to go onward. First, let’s begin with the JMS connection it self. JMS Connection First rule of thumb is: “Don’t wait for a response when dealing with JMS queues.” How so? Because, a JMS queue is asynchronous so you wont get back anything. There are however two ways of checking if it was a success or not. ...

When I see something like this: public class Config { public static final string DATABASELINK = "linkhere"; . . . } It sends a small, but chilling shiver down my spine. Just. don’t. There are a lot of possibilities to use configuration in Java. Java property files. Xml. Xml serialization. CSV file. Whatever suits you best, but this? DON’T!