Biography
Blog
Spring MVC, JavaFX , Google Web Toolkit and Struts2 - State of the (dis)Union.
March 12 2008
My fellow Java Developers. Two years ago I wrote an article on 'Web 2.0 and Enterprise Java - move over Struts' looking at what was likely to replace Struts 1 (then and now a de facto web standard). How... read moreBusiness Users Creating Rules - BRMS Guide Preview (JBoss Drools)
February 19 2008
The aim of Drools (or any other Business Rules Engine) is to get knowledge out of business user's heads and into a format where it can be copied , edited and peer reviewed , then run 24/7. Ideally, business users... read moreHow to explain Rules and RuleFlow to your Boss
December 07 2007
A warning if anybody asks you about your job: the words ‘grabbing people’s brains and shoving them into a PC‘ is not the best explanation. I wouldn’t recommend explaining Rules and RuleFlow to your boss in those terms either. Unless they already think you’re some sort of Frankenstein and your… read moreNovember 19 2007
The JBoss Drools boys have something cool brewing. They already have the most useful GWT (Google Web Toolkit) App that I’ve seen outside of the Googleplex. That’s a fully fledged app ready and waiting to be used in anger, not some example widget, or a test case thrown together by… read moreFlash Killers - Java FX, Silverlight, Groovy and Xoetrope
November 12 2007
It wasn’t meant to be this way, but I spent most of the IJTC talking to people about Flash Killers. Technologies that look good, work in any browser and are powerful enough to deliver enterprise applications with no installation. Dejan Bosanac, was speaking on Scripting in the JVM. He was… read moreThe top 10 Speakers at the Irish Java Technologies Conference
October 25 2007
If you’re around Dublin on the 6th / 7th / 9th November you’re more than welcome to drop into the Irish Java Technologies Conference (IJTC).This post is preview of some of the people who are speaking. If you can’t make it, it’s an invitation to check out speaker’s websites and… read moreDoes your bad Java code need help? (from Rules and Flow)
October 01 2007
Picture the scene: a self help group meeting, plastic chairs arranged in a circle. Sitting on the chairs are an assortment of (mainly) men in their 20’s or 30’s, some smartly dressed, others with 2 day old beards. They fail to look each other in the eye, until one plucks… read moreRed Hat Developer Studio - Good but could have been Great
September 13 2007
Which IDE is best for writing Java code? Leaving aside NetBeans (a big assumption given that it now has excellent Ruby and JRuby integration), the choice was between Intellij or Eclipse. IntelliJ while commercial, wasn’t too expensive and ‘just worked’ out of the box. Eclipse, if you were willing to… read moreJuly 10 2007
A while back , I wrote an article for O’Reilly’s sister site , Java.net about How to add Ajax to your Struts Application. While it was pretty straightfoward (as is Ajax underneath all the hype), it still involved a little to much JavaScript for my liking. Nothing against JavaScript, but… read moreMarch 27 2007
First up, this isn’t a Java post, but it should be of interest to you as a Java developer. O’Reilly has many categories of blogs, but not (yet) a Web2-dev one. If your world view doesn’t include Web 2, RSS or online development tools then stop reading now. Like many… read moreMarch 22 2007
Lost in the hype around Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) is the fact that the idea is really really simple. It’s all based on the idea that most applications (and that includes websites) are built either to be used by people , or used by computers. The pictures below (a free… read moreAdvanced Java - whats YOUR opinion?
March 06 2007
I been asked to spec an ‘Advanced Java’ training course. The list (below) contains a couple of ideas of what should be on such a course but ‘Advanced Java’ means different things to different people. Over the many years you’ve spent with Java, you’ve specialised - partly out of what… read moreDear Bruce Eckel : Hybrid Java, Google Web Toolkit and Adobe Flex
January 31 2007
Dear Bruce, First up, thanks for the book. Yes I’m saying thank-you about 8 years too late. ‘Thinking in Java‘ is what got me going in the language and in my mind is one of the best Java books written (sorry Tim). Giving it away free only cemented your reputation… read moreJava and those pesky Google APIs
January 23 2007
Recently one or two people disagreed with what I had to say about the impact that the Google (and other) API’s will have on Java. Considering the ratio of positive to negative comments (about 3 for and 30 violently against), I obviously need to express myself in a clearer way.… read moreDo Google Spreadsheets mean the end of Java?
January 18 2007
Or to be more accurate ‘Do Google Spreadsheets mean the end of Java as we know it’? Update: There is a reply to the (many) comments on this blogpost here: Java and those pesky Google API’s Think about this. Who pays your wages Mr Java-Developer-who-has-just-had-a-couple-of-years-at-the-top-of-the-pile? Clients, or if you’re in a… read more
