pgt

Upcoming google i/o 2010 gwt sessions

P.G.Taboada — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:44:01 +0000

Here are the GWT sessions on the upcoming google i/o 2010 to keep an eye on.

Google usually publishes the sessions on youtube and uploads the slides to the respective session homepage. Ray Ryan is talking on two session, one of it is called “Architecting GWT applications for production at Google” – maybe it is part two of his last talk on gwt architectures best practices.

I surely won’t miss any of those:

Architecting for performance with Google Web Toolkit

Modern web applications are quickly evolving to an architecture that has to account for the performance characteristics of the client, the server, and the global network connecting them. Should you render HTML on the server or build DOM structures with JS in the browser, or both? This session discusses this, as well as several other key architectural considerations to keep in mind when building your Next Big Thing.

GWT + HTML5 can do what?!

How can you take advantage of new HTML5 features in your GWT applications? In this session, we answer that question in the form of demos — lots and lots of demos. We’ll cover examples of how to use Canvas for advanced graphics, CSS3 features, Web Workers, and more within your GWT applications.

GWT’s UI overhaul: UiBinder, ClientBundle, and Layout Panels

There have been some really huge improvements in GWT’s UI fundamentals over the past year. We’ve introduced features such as UiBinder, ClientBundle, CssResource, and uber layout panels that allow you to build fast UIs in a sane manner. Come see how fun/easy/fast it can be to use these technologies in harmony to overhaul your UI.

GWT continuous build and testing best practices

GWT has a lot of little-publicized infrastructure that can help you build apps The Right Way: test-driven development, fast continuous builds, code coverage, comprehensive unit tests, and integration testing using Selenium or WebDriver. This session will survey GWT’s testing infrastructure, describe some best practices we’ve developed at Google, and help you avoid common pitfalls.

Architecting GWT applications for production at Google

For large GWT applications, there’s a lot you should think about early in the design of your project. GWT has a variety of technologies to help you, but putting it all together can be daunting. This session walks you through how teams at Google architect production-grade apps, from design to deployment, using GWT.

Measure in milliseconds redux: Meet Speed Tracer

It turns out that web apps can be slow for all sorts of opaque and unintuitive reasons. Don’t be fooled into thinking that bloated, slow JavaScript is the only culprit. This session introduces you to Speed Tracer, a new GWT tool that can tell you exactly where time is going within the browser.

Faster apps faster: Optimizing apps with the GWT Compiler

The GWT compiler isn’t just a Java to JavaScript transliterator. It performs many optimizations along the way. In this session, we’ll show you not only the optimizations performed, but how you can get more out of the compiler itself. Learn how to speed up compiles, use -draftCompile, compile for only one locale/browser permutation, and more.

GWT Linkers target HTML5 Web Workers, Chrome Extensions, and more

At its core GWT has a well-defined and customizable mechanism — called Linkers — that controls exactly how GWT’s compiled JavaScript should be packaged, served, and run. This session will describe how to create linkers and explains some of the linkers we’ve created, including a linker that turns a GWT module into an HTML5 Web Worker and one that generates an HTML App Cache manifest automatically.

Atlassian dropping IE 6 support

P.G.Taboada — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:49:50 +0000

I found this one here in the atlassian forums, unfortunately the link posted there is broken.

Hi guys,

We are announcing our end of life of Atlassian support for Internet Explorer 6 on JIRA.

This will be effective from the launch date of JIRA 4.2 (target Q3, 2010). This means that JIRA 4.1 will be the last version of JIRA to support IE6. (From JIRA 4.0 to JIRA 4.1, all of the main functionality will work in IE 6; however, some of the visual effects will be missing).

The End of Support Announcements for JIRA specifies end of support for browsers, appserver and JDK. We should add Atlassian products to the IE death march.

IE 6 death march

P.G.Taboada — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:28:14 +0000

This year is a great year for web development. We will witness the “end of life” of IE 6. And as far as I got it right from here, IE 7 is being trashed on the same day:

13-Jul-2010
Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP Professional Service
Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP Professional

And sincerely: this is good. I just hope companies start upgrading soon, why should we wait until July? I just hope that Google, Amazon, Ebay and others take the chance to honor this date. What about turning off IE 6 support completely for a week or two? This surely would help companies to speed up transition…

But IE 6 was not all pain… did you see this one here? So sad and funny at the same time… There is even a website dedicated to the IE death march!

So before you update to IE 8 I just wanted to point out that…

Internet Explorer is a piece of software more generally called “web browser“
It might come as a surprise, but the Internet Explorer is not the only browser available for Windows users…
Sadly, Internet Explorer browser updates are the only ones the inexplicably involve updating half of the underlying OS ;-)
Internet Explorer has been the least compliant browser for several years
Internet Explorer has been the slowest browser for several users/ years

So, before updating, have a look at Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera. They are all far better (faster, more secure, more compliant) in browsing the web than Internet Explorer.

And you don’t have to fear your OS is vulnerable or broken after installing a update.

And, just in case you missed that one: HTML5 is the next big step in the web development. Google and Apple are the key players this time. Not Microsoft. Microsoft announced that they will setup a set of tests to evaluate HTML5. And they announced that IE 9 will be able to draw round corners (this is innovation from Microsofts point of view, really).

With HTML5 we will leverage the web to next level, the new features are awesome. Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Opera already support the vast majority of the HTML5 features:

Google Bets Big on HTML 5: News from Google I/O

GWT 2.0.1 is da

P.G.Taboada — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:31:17 +0000

Habs gerade erst gesehen.

Aus den “release notes“:

Standard.css missing new layout styles
The CurrencyList/CurrencyData APIs are now public

Looking forward to GWT 2.0.1

P.G.Taboada — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:32:07 +0000

I just spent some time on the GWT issue list, nice to see work being completed on the 2.0.1 release. Unfortunately, it looks like week numbers are not going to make it into 2.0.1. Since many issues are already marked “FixedNotReleased” it might be a good option to checkout and build GWT from the source. Unfortunately the standard layout for TabLayoutPanel isn’t marked fixed yet…

Here is the issue list for the release 2.0.1 I have been looking at:

http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/list?can=2&q=+milestone%3D2_0_1&colspec=ID+Type+Status+Priority+Milestone+Owner+Summary&cells=tiles

Some issues are tagged “NextRelease”, so this a worthwhile list to look at:

http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/list?can=2&q=milestone=NextRelease&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Priority%20Milestone%20Owner%20Summary

As you can see, there are some issues tagged “NextRelease” that already are marked “FixedNotReleased”.

In the list of “Planned” issues you will find “drag and drop” and support for “comet/ server push“:

http://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/list?can=2&q=milestone%3DPlanned&colspec=ID+Type+Status+Priority+Milestone+Owner+Summary&cells=tiles

From hype to hype

P.G.Taboada — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:39:33 +0000

Thanks to Oliver for this awesome cartoon.

Source: http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2009/12/from-hype-to-hype.html

Wann auch immer wir sind

P.G.Taboada — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:50:00 +0000

Erster Platz

Ich möchte Ursula Lohrey für den ersten Platz in dem Plakatwettbewerb

GOTT IST ALT… ABER VIEL BESCHÄFTIGT!
Plakatwettbewerb zum Thema „Generation 50+ und Arbeit“

gratulieren. Lohrey habe ich unter anderem mein Logo zu verdanken.

Der regionale Beschäftigungspakt fünfzigPLUSarbeit rief zu einem Plakat-Wettbewerb zum Thema Arbeit und Alter auf. Der KulturPackt führte dabei die Ausschreibung durch und organisierte die Jurierung.

Zur Beteiligung aufgerufen waren Grafiker, Zeichner, Maler, Fotografen, Bildhauer und Objektkünstler. Zu dem schwierig umzusetzenden Thema bewarben sich 19 Künstler und Grafiker mit 40 Arbeiten. Eine fünfköpfige Jury, bestehend aus Vertretern der Beschäftigungsinitiative und des KulturPackts sowie einem freien Grafiker wählte zehn Entwürfe aus, die in zwei Ausstellungen gezeigt werden sollen.

Ausgewählt wurden Arbeiten von neun Künstlern: Monika Tinkl (Niederwerrn), Annette Fernandes (Kitzingen), Uta Böttcher (Würzburg), René Landspersky (München), Steffi Weiß (Rimpar), Ursula Lohrey (Schonungen), Corinna Herrmann (Kitzingen), Lars Kuhfuss (Veitshöcheim) und Wolfgang Kuhfuss (Nüdlingen).

Bild und Botschaft:

4 Menschen aus der Arbeitswelt bilden mit Ihren Händen eine Art Treppe, eine Leiter. In Wechselwirkung mit dem Schlüsselzitat wird sie schnell zu einer Lebensleiter aus lebenden Sprossen. Jede Stufe bedeutet eine andere Gegenwart, eine nach der anderen. Die Lebensstufenleiter ist eine Metapher für eine ganz große Gemeinsamkeit: Sie ist unsere Timeline, unsere Aufgabe und gleichzeitig ein Pfad aus Reifestufen. Und Alter steht hier nicht zur Diskussion.

Textebenen:

Rechts daneben wiederholt eine typographische Leiter aus Vornamen dieses Bild. Buchstaben behaupten, daß alle vier Personen das Alter von 54 haben. Diese Irritation klärt sich auf, sobald man sich dem Plakat nähert und die kleineren Zeilen lesen kann: nämlich die Jahreszahlen, zu denen die jeweilige Person ihren 54sten Geburtstag haben wird. Dieser Kunstgriff, vier Personen auf den ersten Blick gleichaltrig zu machen, konfrontiert mit der Unabänderlichkeit , daß wir alle ein und demselben ZEITSTROM unterworfen sind. Gedanklich wird für Augenblicke greifbar und möglich, daß wir uns zeitgleich im alten und im jungen Stadium befinden können, und in einem ganz bestimmten Sinne niemals altern werden.

Der verdammte Zeitstrom, an dem entlang wir Jahrzehnte hangeln, kann uns älter machen, aber nicht zwingend klein.

Die Irritation von ‘4 mal 54’ bedeutet die Chance, eigene Sichtweisen, je nachdem,

auf welcher Altersstufe wir uns befinden, auf Opportunismus hin zu untersuchen. Und spielerisch genau diese Sicht auf unsere Person anzuwenden, indem wir uns vorstellen, daß weitere 30 Jahre unserer Lebenszeit verstrichen sind und jemand so über uns denkt.

Die Wortatmosphäre “WANN AUCH IMMER WIR SIND.” verschmilzt mit der Bildbotschaft und schreibt sich mitten auf den Nachthimmel … wie ein Gebet.

Ursula Lohrey

Die Ausstellung findet im alten Rathaus Schweinfurt vom 16. – 22. Dezember statt, die Plakate von Lohrey können jetzt schon online betrachtet werden.

What if Operating Systems Were Airlines?

P.G.Taboada — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:32:35 +0000

There are things that must not get lost in time.
Best thing to do is backup. So here is my backup:

DOS Airlines
Everybody pushes the airplane until it glides, then they jump on and let the plane coast until it hits the ground again, then they push again jump on again, and so on.
OS/2 Airlines
The terminal is almost empty, with only a few prospective passengers milling about. The announcer says that their flight has just departed, wishes them a good flight, though there are no planes on the runway. Airline personnel walk around, apologising profusely to customers in hushed voices, pointing from time to time to the sleek, powerful jets outside the terminal on the field. They tell each passenger how good the real flight will be on these new jets and how much safer it will be than Windows Airlines, but that they will have to wait a little longer for the technicians to finish the flight systems.
Once they finally finished you’re offered a flight at reduced cost. To board the plane, you have your ticket stamped ten different times by standing in ten different lines. Then you fill our a form showing where you want to sit and whether the plane should look and feel like an ocean liner, a passenger train or a bus. If you succeed in getting on the plane and the plane succeeds in taking off the ground, you have a wonderful trip…except for the time when the rudder and flaps get frozen in position, in which case you will just have time to say your prayers and get in crash position.
Windows Air
The terminal is pretty and colorful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth take-off. After about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.
Windows NT Air
Just like Windows Air, but costs more, uses much bigger planes, and takes out all the other aircraft within a 40-mile radius when it explodes.
Mac Airlines
All the stewards, stewardesses, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look the same, act the same, and talk the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are told you don’t need to know, don’t want to know, and would you please return to your seat and watch the movie.
Unix Airlines
Each passenger brings a piece of the airplane and a box of tools to the airport. They gather on the tarmac, arguing constantly about what kind of plane they want to build and how to put it together. Eventually, they build several different aircraft, but give them all the same name. Some passengers actually reach their destinations. All passengers believe they got there.
Wings of OS/400
The airline has bought ancient DC-3s, arguably the best and safest planes that ever flew, and painted “747″ on their tails to make them look as if they are fast. The flight attendants, of course, attend to your every need, though the drinks cost $15 a pop. Stupid questions cost $230 per hour, unless you have SupportLine, which requires a first class ticket and membership in the frequent flyer club. Then they cost $500, but your accounting department can call it overhead.
Mach Airlines
There is no airplane. The passengers gather and shout for an airplane, then wait and wait and wait and wait. A bunch of people come, each carrying one piece of the plane with them. These people all go out on the runway and put the plane together piece by piece, arguing constantly about what kind of plane they’re building. The plane finally takes off, leaving the passengers on the ground waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. After the plane lands, the pilot telephones the passengers at the departing airport to inform them that they have arrived.
Newton Airlines
After buying your ticket 18 months in advance, you finally get to board the plane. Upon boarding the plane you are asked your name. After 6 times, the crew member recognizes your name and then you are allowed to take your seat. As you are getting ready to take your seat, the steward announces that you have to repeat the boarding process because they are out of room and need to recount to make sure they can take more passengers.
VMS Airlines
The passengers all gather in the hanger, watching hundreds of technicians check the flight systems on this immense, luxury aircraft. This plane has at least 10 engines and seats over 1,000 passengers. All the passengers scramble aboard, as do the necessary complement of 200 technicians. The pilot takes his place up in the glass cockpit. He guns the engines, only to realise that the plane is too big to get through the hangar doors.
BeOS Air
You have to pay for the tickets, but they’re half the price of Windows Air, and if you are an aircraft mechanic you can probably ride for free. It only takes 15 minutes to get to the airport and you are cheuferred there in a limozine. BeOS Air only has limited types of planes that only only hold new luggage. All planes are single seaters and the model names all start with an “F” (F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18, etc.). The plane will fly you to your destination on autopilot in half the time of other Airways or you can fly the plane yourself. There are limited destinations, but they are only places you’d want to go to anyway. You tell all your friends how great BeOS Air is and all they say is “What do you mean I can’t bring all my old baggage with me?”
Linux Airlines
Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself. When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, “You had to do what with the seat?”

Source: http://webaugur.com/bibliotheca/field_stock/os-airlines.html

If programming languages ran the Airlines

P.G.Taboada — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:27:40 +0000

There are things that must not get lost in time.
Best thing to do is backup. So here is my backup:

PL/1 Mainframe Air:
You arrive at the airport. It’s not really an airport, but actually an old wooden building next to the river. You ask why there isn’t a real airport. A very old man answers you that they have been building with wood ever since the beginning of construction, so it must be good. You ask where you can check in and when your plane leaves, but you are answered that they really don’t have any planes, because they think planes are too modern. Instead, you must place your luggage and yourself into a rowing boat in the river. This is because people have been using rowing boats for centuries, so rowing boats have proven that they work very good. You argue that a rowing boat can’t possibly take you to your destination 2000 miles away, but the old man insists that you try. After all, the rowing boat has never let HIM down. The fact that he only ever went as far as 2 miles up the river can’t convince him. In the end, with no choice left, you decide to give it a try. At first, all goes quite well. The old man can steer the rowing boat very fast down the river, but when you finally arrive at sea, the old man has a heart-attack and dies. You are now in the middle of the ocean, with nothing but a pair of paddles. Good luck.
C++ Air:
When you enter the airport, there are 5 entrances. You walk towards one, but then someone warns you that, if you choose one, you can never switch back and everything, including the destination of your journey, will depend on it. After thourough consideration, you find the entrance that is best for you. You go to a checkin terminal to check in, and you receive a ticket with everything from you name and address to the name of your dog (which you left home) and the contents of your wardrobe. You ask why there is so much information that isn’t necessary for the flight and you are answered that this is good, because then, you are in complete control of what you are doing. When you sit down at a table at a restaurant, the waiter won’t bring you anything, because you have the wrong flight-ticket. If you ask what this has to do with getting food, you are told that you should have thought of this before you chose a ticket. A bit confused, you enter the airplane. You are given a meal with a couple of slices of bread and a samurai-sword to cut them. Around you, you see everyone try to slice the bread, while accidentally cutting of their own limbs and fingers. You ask the man next to you why they don’t just give you a normal knife to slice your bread and you tell him that swords are very dangerous, but the man says that only a samurai sword is sharp enough to slice bread and that you are stupid and a noob if you can’t do it. At least, the airplane is very very fast and you get to your destination in a very short time, but when you approach the destination airport, the pilot receives a message that the landing airstrip has changed. Because the airplane is unable to change the destination landing strip after take-off, the pilot returns to the airport where it left from and will have to start the flight all over again.
PHP Air:
When you arrive at the airport, you see a lot of people dragging parts of airplanes around. When you ask why this is, a man says that you need airplanes in order to fly, so that’s why they are building them. You ask if there aren’t any pre-made planes that have passed security tests, but the man has already dissappeared with a big wing under his arm. Once you board your airplane (the left wing is still not finished, but the stewardess promises that it will be before take-off), you meet a little kid. You ask him if this is his first flight, but it appears that he is actually the pilot of the plane. The kid tells you all about the fact that he has played with toy-airplanes when he was a baby and that he has a real pilot’s uniform, so he is more than qualified to fly the plane. When the plane takes off, there is a lot of turbulence, but after a while, it gets better and the plane is on it’s way. When you fly above the ocean, the plane is suddenly hit by a thunderstorm. The little kid gets a little frightened, but he tries his best to save the situation. When more and more people start to panic, the little kid begins to cry and gives up. You try to steer the plane yourself, but there is no usermanual anywhere to be found. When the plane heads towards crashing in the ocean, you look outside the window and you see a man screaming in a rowing boat. At least, you will not go down alone…
.NET Airlines:
You arrive at a very modern terminal. There is only one counter where you can check in, but you don’t have to wait and you are helped by a very friendly woman. After checking in, you decide to get something to eat. There is only one restaurant, and it’s pretty expensive, but the food is very good, so you don’t mind. You are guided to your plane by another very friendly stewardess. There is only one corridor through which you can walk, so you don’t really need the help, but on the other hand, it’s quite comfortable. Your plane is the only plane at the airport, but it’s a very nice one, with very nice chairs and a wonderful in-flight dinner. After about 20 minutes in the air, you land at exactly the same airport as where you left from, because it’s the only airport where .NET airplanes can land.
Java Air:
You arrive at the airport with all your luggage. It’s kinda heavy, so you sigh: “I wish I had someone to carry it for me…” Immediatly, out of all corners of the terminal, people start running towards you, offering you their services. Some ask a little money, but most of them do it for free, because they like hauling with luggage. At first, you are totally overwhelmed by this many people offering you stuff, but after a while, you get to know some of them and they are quite nice. When arriving at your airplane, there is not one, but five, all totally different, but they are all airplanes and they all bring you where you want to go. Some of them are even free. You see some people, especially people with suits and ties, who don’t trust all the free airplanes and are anxious to choose from so many options. They all walk into a big blue building. You hear that you can let the people inside the blue building do everything for you and make the choices for you, if you pay them enough, but since you’re a little short on cash and also because you never actually see anyone come OUT of the blue building again, you decide to fly with one of the free airplanes. After a pleasant flight, you arrive at your destination. You try to convince your friends to travel with Java Air too, but all they can say is: “Was it FREE??? Then it cannot be good…”
Ruby Air (courtesy of Ryan Daum):
You arrive at the airport, which is actually a nightclub. There is a band playing at the check-in desk. They are playing music which sounds like New Wave from the early 80s, but the band is made up of people born after 1975. You swear that the woman at the ticket counter looks like Adele Goldberg, but she just looks at you funnily, and won’t let you past until you exchange your Dell laptop for a MacBook Pro. You are told the only place the plane will land is Portland. The interior of the plane is retro-chic, and the pilot has piercings and spikey hair. After take-off, the landing gear of the plane won’t retract, and is missing oxygen masks, but the pilot says that’s O.K., because when he build the plane he used unit tests. Halfway through the flight, the plane runs out of fuel, and you are all forced to transfer onto a new plane after a brief landing on a pacific island. You see Jack Sheppard on the island.
JavaFX Air (courtesy of Sven Hafner):
This one is an offspring of a very traditional airline which is around for some ten years, with a good safety record, but aircrafts available in grey color and flying to all business destinations. The new sibling starting up is very colorful and supposed to fly to hip and colorful holiday destinations using whatever aircraft you like, including hot air balloons, surfboards and submarines, though it doesn’t offer flights on freely available aircrafts (not yet). You buy a ticket with fancy 3D holograms printed on it and the flight attendants are not walking along the aisle but sliding in from the side. Before you board you can easily choose the color scheme of the plane, but then you need to paint it by yourself because there is no one doing that for your with fancy tools. It is fun flying with them. They are competing with the other budget airlines, Silverlight Air and Flex Air.
Erlang Air (courtesy of Zubin Wadia):
You arrive at a fairly rudimentary airport on your way to Tokyo. Only Herring is available in the food court, along with bottled water. No explanation is given in regards to the dearth of options. Stranger still, all the staff appear to have very restricted linguistic skills coupled with awkward inflections in their speech. Regardless, you figure out how to check in and get on the plane. Predictably, more Herring is served. Unfortunately, the plane hits an air pocket, resulting in a massive drop in altitude, in turn leading to the engines burning out. Strangely, all the staff are calm, they move to the exit doors and open them mid-flight… Absolute chaos reigns momentarily as we get sucked out of the aircraft and into thin air. Just as suddenly, we’re back in an aircraft, it appears to be the same one, we all have the same seats and we’re still heading to Tokyo.

Many thanks to: Gert-Jan Schouten
Source: http://www.matrixweb.nl/airlines.html

Softskills: Development by…

P.G.Taboada — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:22:04 +0000

Yesterday I read a tweet that deserved more than a simple RT:

Asshole Driven development (ADD) – Any team where the biggest jerk makes all the big decisions is asshole driven development. All wisdom, logic or process goes out the window when Mr. Asshole is in the room, doing whatever idiotic, selfish thing he thinks is best. There may rules and processes, but Mr. A breaks them and people follow anyway.
Cognitive Dissonance development (CDD) – In any organization where there are two or more divergent beliefs on how software should be made. The tension between those beliefs, as it’s fought out in various meetings and individual decisions by players on both sides, defines the project more than any individual belief itself.
Cover Your Ass Engineering (CYAE) – The driving force behind most individual efforts is to make sure than when the shit hits the fan, they are not to blame.
Development By Denial (DBD) – Everybody pretends there is a method for what’s being done, and that things are going ok, when in reality, things are a mess and the process is on the floor. The worse things get, the more people depend on their denial of what’s really happening, or their isolation in their own small part of the project, to survive.
Get Me Promoted Methodology (GMPM) – People write code and design things to increase their visibility, satisfy their boss’s whims, and accelerate their path to a raise or the corner office no matter how far outside of stated goals their efforts go. This includes allowing disasters to happen so people can be heroes, writing hacks that look great in the short term but crumble after the individual has moved on, and focusing more on the surface of work than its value.

Here is the source: http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2007/asshole-driven-development/

Softskills: Management by…

P.G.Taboada — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:13:51 +0000

Bisher kannte ich folgende “Management-By”-Arten:

Management by Babysitter
Man kümmert sich um die Angelegenheit, wo jemand am lautesten schreit.
Management by Champignon
Die Mitarbeiter im Dunkeln lassen, gelegentlich mit Mist bestreuen; und wenn sich ein heller Kopf zeigt: abschneiden!
Management by Moses
Er führte sein Volk in die Wüste und hoffte auf ein Wunder.
Management by Alphüttli
Hoch oben angesiedelt, aber furchtbar primitiv eingerichtet.
Management by Jeans
An den wichtigsten Stellen sitzen die größten Nieten.
Management by Ping-Pong
Jeden Vorgang solange zurück- oder weitergeben, bis er sich von selbst erledigt.

Eine komplette Liste habe ich dann hier gefunden: http://www.olev.de/m/management_by.pdf

Using Speed Tracer on a Mac

P.G.Taboada — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:03:08 +0000

Speed Tracer on a Mac

I finally got Speed Tracer running on Mac OSX. Just in case you missed the news: GWT 2.0 was released yesterday and brought a nice friend called Speed Tracer.

The tool itself is written in GWT (funny, don’t?) and works as an Chrome extension. Since Chrome for Mac is beta and does not have support for extensions we nee to use use Chromium.

There are postings on how to get extensions running on Chrome for Mac, but I preferred to use a Chromium build.

Speed Tracer is a Google Chrome extension that helps you identify and fix performance problems in your web applications. It visualizes metrics that are taken from low level instrumentation points inside of the browser and analyzes them as your application runs. Using Speed Tracer you are able to get a better picture of where time is being spent in your application.

Thanks to pohl (irc chat on ##gwt) for the hints.

So here we go:

1) We need some Chrome build that has “extensions enabled”. I used this one here, but you might try any other newer one.

2) Install Speed Tracer.

3) Start Chromium with the required command line parameter.

This part is the only real tricky one if you are not a geek… ;-)
From the Terminal you can start Chromium manually by executing the following…
/Applications/Chromium.app/Contents/MacOS/Chromium --enable-extension-timeline-api
… or you simply rename the bin to something else and place a script that does the command line magic for you.
I renamed Chromium to Chromium-bin and created a Chromium named script file that contains:
#!/bin/bash
exec "${0%/*}/Chromium-bin" --enable-extension-timeline-api
Don’t forget to make the script file executable…

That’s it. Now you can visit some ajax-funny site (google wave, google maps, google mail, google docs, you name it) and test drive Speed Tracer.

Good luck!

Sample gwt-dispath project

P.G.Taboada — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:02:00 +0000

Some readers requested a sample project, showing how to use gwt-dispatch with spring.

So I updated my sample project to the actuan gwt-dispatch-1.1.0-shapshot version and uploaded it to my server.

You can download it from here.

Please drop a comment if you have any suggestions/ questions/ problems.

WebTech and W-JAX 2009 conference material

P.G.Taboada — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:21:20 +0000

In the last two weeks I have spoken on two different conferences (wjax, webtech) about GWT concepts, what's comming in GWT 2.0 and about some of the architecture best practices and lessons learned from the AdWords team. The sessions where in german but my slides are in english. Just the first two are in german and in the template/theme dictated the conference, sorry for that... ;-)

Java 5 – end of service

P.G.Taboada — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:38:15 +0000

Schon gelesen?

End of Service Life für Java 5

Die 2004 mit großen Sprachänderungen eingeführte fünfte Java-Version hat letztes Wochenende das sogenannte “End of Service Life” (EOSL) erreicht. Sun empfiehlt, um auch zukünftig kritische Fehlerbehebungen zu erhalten, die Anwendungen entweder auf das neueste Update der Java Standard Edition (Java SE) zu migrieren oder den “Java SE Support for Business” in Anspruch zu nehmen, der bis zu 15 Jahre Gewährleistung für ältere Java-Versionen

GWT is not the future but the present of web development

P.G.Taboada — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:16:45 +0000

I just read an interesting blog articles about “is GWT the future of web development or not“. I find the titles quite funny, because I really don’t believe that it was no ones intention to forecast the future, so the real question is – is GWT a good approach for present web development?

There is actually too much fuss about static or dynamic language. The best language is still the language I know best. I feel quite at home with Java and Eclipse – I won’t be any more productive in any other language so soon. If you are telling me that one can do things faster with Grails & Co. you might have a point (I really don’t know), but then we are talking about (web) frameworks and not about the language. I have my roots in Perl programming and I know exactly why I like type safety, but this again is a very personal statement.

Personally speaking, leveraging Java Programmers means really a lot to me. It is not only Eclipse and Java. It is checkstyle, findbugs, unit testing, build infrastructure. I have appreciated reading the GOF patterns, I loved Effective Java and I still have to chuckle when I think of the bad smells in Refactoring (which I somehow know all by personal history). When I do code in Java I mostly do it by consciousness and not by copy and paste from some sites like in my early days in development. Is a matter of fact, I do have something to leverage and it really means something to me.

But wait, let’t just don’t forget that GWT does something really tricky. It is not imposing some Java GUI component model on Javascript. They never left sight of what can be done with Javascript and can’t. It is not like RAP that tries put the Eclipse workbench on the browser, they are just being HTML and Javascript. And this is good and bad. It is good because it is about generating efficient Javascript, and bad because HTML looks ugly without lots of makeup.

If you are looking for eye candy in web development, don’t wast your time with GWT. And if you start doing SmartClient or GXT just know that you are not really leveraging GWT, thats just using GWTs infrastructure but nothing more.

If you are looking for software engineering in web development, take a closer look at GWT.

And yes, the GWT compilation is brutal. That’s why we have the developer modus (formerly known as hosted modus) – it starts fast and I keep it running. Simply refreshing the browser gives me the refreshed code, refreshing the jetty server gives me the changes in the backend. With OOPHM (out of process hosted modus) GWT looses the tight coupling to the only one browser on each OS by doing hosted modus inside-out. Google for it or try it out on your machine, works very good here. And, btw, I do have good monitor, a good chair and a fast computer. I mean, this is my day-to-day job.

I don’t know if scripting is the future, but I know it is the present when we speak of web development. Browser do speak javascript and this won’t change in the near future, I mean, it is even getting worse (or better, you name it) with HTML 5, where we will be able to do 2D and video and much more just in javascript.

And when it comes to javascript in the browser, I don’t see any better approach then GWT at the moment.

Maturity? GWT is rock stable. It is more a compiler and does not really give me much runtime dependencies. We now have AdWords and Google Wave to showcase how far we can come if we have the knowledge and the resources.

And no, there is no eye candy.

If you are going down the GWT road, please have a look at the GWT Architectural best practices. If you like Spring (as I do), please have a look on how to use your Spring backend with GWT-dispatch (command pattern based RPC approach for GWT).

[update]

Joel has commented on the ranting post and it is hard to find it on the very long list of comments. That’s why I want to quote it here:

It’s unfortunate to see another long rant based on the same misunderstandings that we’ve seen from the day we released GWT. Very briefly, here are the major issues I see:

1. I don’t like Java, because Java programmers write reams of unnecessary abstraction.
We largely agree on this point (speaking for myself, at least, not everyone at Google). J2EE is a monstrosity, as is whatever library led to RequestBuilderFactoryFactory. This has precisely squat to do with Java the language.

2. Translating Java to Javascript necessarily leads to bad code, because some things can’t be translated well.
This is, in some sense, true. I really wish Java had a first-class function/method object (C# delegates would be fine). I wish Enum weren’t so damned heavy (we’re working on that). But the things that aren’t present in Java, that would be useful when translating to Javascript, probably account for <5% of the code we generate. So it’s irritating but largely irrelevant.

3. Compilation times take too long.
I hate them too. So what? But if you’re not using hosted (development) mode 99% of the time, you’re either doing something wrong, or you fall into one of a few special cases (e.g., new mobile libraries) that we’re working to address. Development mode gives you basically the standard edit/refresh cycle you get with Javascript, except that the compiler, generators, and other tools all get a chance to do work and catch errors.
Also, if you think you can get away without some sort of compilation process for a large Javascript application, you’re unfortunately mistaken. Badly. You can’t just concatenate a few hundred thousand lines of Javascript, strip out the comments, and hope for the best. You’ll end up with a monstrosity of several megabytes, even for a medium-sized app.

4. The widgets suck.
Fair enough. Hell, I wrote half of them, and don’t entirely disagree. Go write some that don’t. Oh, and when you run off to talk about how much Ext sucks, realize that you’re saying that Ext-JS sucks as well. Neither is the fastest library in the world, but they are very complete and cover a huge variety of use-cases. They made a very different set of tradeoffs than we did, but they’re a legitimate set of tradeoffs, and appeal greatly to enterprise developers that need to get a lot of UI built quickly.

5. Not all applications are Gmail.
No kidding. If I were a real pedant, I would point out that this is a tautology. But yes — if you’re building a simple “page at a time” app and need to add a little script to it, by all means use JQuery or whatever you feel like. That’s appropriate. Use the right tool for the job.

GWT was built to solve a specific set of problems, and we took what we believe are the right set of decisions to do so. Plenty remains to be done, and we continue to work on it. I wrote up a clarification on several of these points some time ago:
http://blog.j15r.com/2009/07/note-i-originally-posted-this-last.html
I hope this proves helpful to some.

GWT Vortrag auf der webTech 2009

P.G.Taboada — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:32:43 +0000

Es ist etwas kurzfristig geworden… Ich werde auch auf der WebTech 09 in Karlsruhe einen Vortrag über GWT halten:

Google Web Toolkit – Making a Better Web 2.0

Mit Adwords und Google Wave sind die ersten großen GWT basierten Anwendungen von Google erschienen. Mit einem optimierenden Kompiler und pfiffige Codegeneratoren werden mit GWT maßgeschneiderte JavaScript Anwendungen erstellt, die Entwicklung findet allerdings in Java statt. In dem Vortrag werden Konzepte, Neuigkeiten aus 2.0 und die aus Adwords gewonnenen Architektur Best Practices vorgestellt.

News from the GWT development front

P.G.Taboada — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 10:07:20 +0000

There have been some quiet updates in the last days on the GWT development front.

First and most important is that the GWT development team has released a milestone towards GWT 2.0. The milestone release can’t be found on the main page, and it was not mentioned in the official GWT blog.

This milestone provides early access (read: known to still be unfinished and buggy) to the various bits of core functionality that will be coming in GWT 2.0

One of the known issues on the group posting states that the actual Google Eclipse Plugin does not work with this release, because it won’t accept this build as a GWT distro. This comes from the fact that GWT 2.0 is missing the platform dependent jars. This comes from the fact that GWT 2.0 is introducing OOPHM, replacing the old “hosted modus” by the new “developer modus” where we can use a set of browsers with a plugin instead of the one bundled with the GWT release:

We’re going to start using the term ”development mode” rather than the old term “hosted mode.” The term ”hosted mode” was sometimes confusing to people, so we’ll be using the more descriptive term from now on. For similar reasons, we’ll be using the term “production mode” rather than “web mode” when referring to compiled script.

Specially interesting for the Mac users, there has also been a quiet update for the Google Eclipse Plugin solving the issue, where we could start the new OOPHM developer modus from eclipse to start “watching the beachball”.

The point is: from now on, we can start using GWT 2.0 and explore the new features. We have both: an official milestone release and a working Eclipse plugin. Development infrastructure problems resolved, stays the question: should we use a milestone build? This question is not so easy to answer.

First, if we believe what speakers told in the Google IO 2009 sessions, the Google teams using GWT (ok, let’s name them: AdWords development team, Google Wave development team) are using GWT build from trunk.

How can that be? How can anyone use something build from trunk that is undergoing such changes?

Well, this is called a “solid development process” and “discipline”. If you have a look at the GWT sources and at the commit statements, you will notice that:

commit statements have the name of the reviewer.
Take a moment to think about it.
many developers have their own branches where they to their stuff. Only reviewed changes are commited (integrated) to the trunk build. So, the trunk moves from one consistent (reviewed) state to the next one.
Take two moments to think about this…

Second, GWT is more a compiler than a runtime library, and it would not be the first time we use beta compilers during development.

Back to the question: can we use a milestone or even a trunk build?

Yes – I think yes, we can. As long as the GWT team continues working they way they have been for the last months, trunk, milestone and beta builds have an unmatched quality status. Just my 2 cents…

Browser? Ja klar, in lila bitte.

P.G.Taboada — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:29:45 +0000

Eine nicht repräsentative Umfrage im Freundeskreis eines Google Mitarbeiters hat ergeben:

Die meisten sind der Meinung, dass Sie mehr Zeit im Web als im Auto verbringen, und
90% der Befragten wissen was für ein Auto sie fahren,
aber nur 50% der Befragten wussten welchen Browser sie verwenden.

Cars, browsers

Angesichts der Tatsache, dass Browser (wie Autos) doch sehr unterschiedlich sind (unterschiedlich sicher, unterschiedlich schnell), ist es eine doch recht erschreckende Feststellung.

Gut, man könnte jetzt argumentieren: “zeige mir deine Freunde, und ich sage dir wer du bist”, aber ich befürchte unsere Freundeskreise würden nicht viel besser abscheiden. Oder?

Immerhin lebe ich in einem Land in dem Günter Jauch als “intelligentester Mann” gewählt wurde. Ich weiss zwar nicht ob er es ist oder nicht, die Begründung hat es aber in sich: “Er kennt alle Antworten”.

Nein, das ist nicht lustig.

Jedenfalls ist die Fragestellung witzig und nachahmenswert. Also habe ich ein Umfrage angelegt, bitte teilnehmen und weitersagen:

Laden…

Eclipse Galileo SR1

P.G.Taboada — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:42:55 +0000

I just started downloading the SR1 release of Eclipse Galileo. According to bugzilla, there were 241 bugs fixed with this release.

Can’t wait for the download to finish to check if Eclipse is working better on Snow Leopard…