Blog harvest, March/Easter 2010

Easter times means springtime, an hour stolen by the daylight saving time, rapidly changing weather and the first days without gloves (I catch chillblains very quick. There isn’t an adequate word for them in the german language, so I couldn’t name it for years). We are looking forward for a very hot summer, not only with the weather. But now, let’s talk about software.

• Top 10 Web Software Application Security Risks – The OWASP community has released their current list of web programmer gotchas. There is nothing to add but “don’t try this at work, kids!”. For a broader audience, there’s the updated “Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors” from the Common Weakness Enumeration project.
• The 10 most common mistakes made in software development – Another top list with developer mistakes, written by Peter Horsten from GOYELLO IT Services. This one isn’t too code centric and doesn’t provide many solutions, but there is much wisdom in top 9 and 10.
• I Have No Talent – There is a saying that open source development will make you humble, but John Nunemaker takes it to an extreme. He speaks true words. My favourite phrase is the last one, saying that he doesn’t compare himself to others, but to his own progress. If only everybody would do.
• Why I love everything you hate about Java – An interesting blog entry by Nick Kallen. He takes a stand for the “bloated” middle-layer in (java) code. The post tends to be a long read, but I found it worthwile. The one thing I hate about Java is the slow progress in recent years.
• Why I dropped Scala in favor of Java? – While you might argue about the universal importance of Subhash Chandran’s reasoning, it’s still valid. Combined with the previous blog harvest entry, there’s a pattern to be discovered: the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. But you have to change sides to see it.
• NIO.2 : The new Path API in Java 7 – Java makes slow progress in recent years, but there is progress to be seen. The Path API is something we could have used years earlier. The DirectoryStream and WatchService are two functionalities you couldn’t easily build on your own yet.
• Ant 1.8 Scanning Leaves 1.7.1 in the Dust – If you are using Ant, you can regain performance with just an upgrade. And you will find the other new features (like lexically scoped properties) really useful.

This was the more serious part of this harvesting. Let’s read some articles that share their message in a lighter way:

• A day in the life of a Programmer v1.0 – I really like the terms COFFEE++ and “Cognitive RPM”. And to everbody who doesn’t laugh at the term “TPS report”, I recommend you watch the movie “Office Space”.
• The Smileys in Scala – When other languages one have operators with boring names (like “binary shift left”), Groovy stepped up with the Elvis operator. But now there’s Scala with a whole bunch of happy little operators. I laughed a lot about the “Fussy Bird”.
• The worst interview question ever – I’m not sure if this story is funny or sad. Maybe it depends on your point of view. It clearly shows how pointless some basic questions can be. I’ve made this mistake too and learned from it.
• What Your Hiring Process Says About You – The hiring procedure is crucial for the success of a team or company. Astonishing enough, it isn’t anything near a standardization. But there is literature out there that can help a lot.
• Sometimes It’s Good To Fail an Interview – There seem to be exceptions to the rule that good hiring practices lead to great teams, as proven by this story.

Finally, I want to introduce a “interesting tool” section. Each new harvest should present a framework/product/project I found interesting enough to tell you about it:

• op4j – It calls itself a developer happiness tool. You may call it a stress test for static imports, collection kung-fu or fluency madness. But nevertheless, it’s fun to apply it to your boring old data structures.

P.S.: No easter egg is to be found in this posting.