Java Does Duck Typing

Duck typing is a feature of dynamic object-oriented languages that goes back to Smalltalk, although I first heard the term in the context of Ruby. Here is a very well written article about how to implement duck typing in Java. Although it's more work in Java than in Ruby or Smalltalk, it's not too bad, and could be a worthwhile technique for some cases.

Getting rid of god code

Jeffrey Palermo's post from last Saturday exactly describes what I am about to do at my work right now:

god code leads to overly complex applications. A remedy for god code is to push behavior down into the smaller classes being worked on. Empower the smaller classes to take some responsibility for themselves. They are quite capable.

Ruby Declared Mainstream

Curt Hibbs announces that Ruby has been declared mainstream, meaning that it has made the A-list on the TIOBE Programming Community Index, which attempts to chart the popularity of programming languages. On this list, Java is still number one, but dynamic languages such as Ruby and Python are growing in popularity.

Experiment failed

My experiment in having a blog that combined my interest in Philosophy and Theology with the kinds of posts that I make on this blog did not work out well, so I'm back to posting my code notes here. I don't have high expectations for this site, except as a place to share some knowledge. I will continue to write about my Philosophical interests here, for those of you who might be interested.

Comprehensive guide to .htaccess

I ran across this tutorial on .htaccess, which is a configuration file for websites hosted by Apache. Even after just a five-minute glance, I found some information that allowed me to fix a Ruby code download problem I was having on this site.

RubyCLR Interview

Port 25 has a video interview with John Lam, the creator of RubyCLR. I was very impressed with him, and I get the impression that RubyCLR has a great future. In the interview, John demonstrates his Avalon Ruby Editor. It's kind of hard to see the screen, but it looks pretty cool. Now I just need to learn what Avalon is!

Exception Rules

Scott Hanselman is working on some rules of thumb for managing exceptions in .NET, but some of these concepts will translate to other languages. The most important to me are:

• Exceptions should be exceptional.
• Don't catch exceptions you can't do anything about.
• Avoid swallowing exceptions, but if you have to swallow an exception, make sure it is well documented, and log it when it happens if possible. Evidently some code out there has performance problems because a large number of exceptions are routinely raised and silently swallowed.

Power Tools

Jeffrey Palermo is doing a series on producing software quickly. In part 3, he describes the importance of good programmer tools. It's all good stuff, but what is of most interest to me is his list of software tools that are applicable to the C# developer.

Scott Hanselman also has a very comprehensive list of tools. Categories in his list include:

• The Big Ten Life and Work-Changing Utilities
• Dropped out of the Top 10 for 2006 but still rockin' sweet
• A Developer's Life
• COM is Dead
• The Angle Bracket Tax (XML/HTML Stuff)
• Regular Expressions
• Launchers
• Stuff I Just Dig
• Low-Level Utilities
• Websites and Bookmarklets (that change the way you work)
• Tools for Bloggers
• Smart People and their Pages for Utils They Wrote
• Alt.lang
• Browser Add-Ins
• Things Windows Forgot
• Outlook AddIns and Life Organizers
• Ultimate Registry Tweaks
• Windows Explorer Integration (and other Integraty things)
• Continuous Integration
• TabletPC Indispensibles
• ASP.NET Must Haves
• Visual Studio.NET Add-Ins