the corner office : tech blog

Russell Beattie: Java needs an overhaul (via Tim Bray). Not sure that I disagree with the arguments, but since I make a living working with long-running server processes where an insanely smart JVM is optimising the code in insane and mind-blowing ways, it's kinda moot for me. And despite its frustrations, I'm not that against coding with Java.

Type-ahead for combos:

• [news.eclipse.platform.swt] Combo typeahead. Points to 2 solutions, linked below:
• SourceForge: SWT Add-ons
• Tom Schindl: AdvancedComboSelectionAdapter (and TestAdvancedComboSelection). In fact, the entire repository may be worth digging around in.

• Developing SWT applications using Eclipse - how to get set up.
• devx: Build Faster with This Turnkey SWT Project Template. For 3.2 but a good idea.

Nifty

• PDE Incubator Spy
• Chris Aniszczyk: Plug-in Spy, Introspecting Eclipse
• (also mentioned: SWT Development Tools, in particular, SWTSpy)

A short Primer to Java Memory Pool Sizing and Garbage Collectors (via).

• hibernate.org: Best Practices for Thick Clients. No Command patterns here, no sirree. Main alternatives are "Implicit Humongous Transaction" and "Mixed Session Pattern". The downside of mixed session pattern is the complexity of managing these sessions. You get back to using Commands and the like. Humongous Transaction is no better, probably worse: there seem to be enough problems associated with keeping long-running sessions going that it's just not worth it. Most useful are some of the comments, with advice based on real-world experience.
• Hibernate and Swing demo app.
• Lukas Barton's blog: 2tier application using Hibernate
• The Visual Editor: iBatis better than Hibernate for GUI applications

• [news.eclipse.platform.swt] How to set width of Combo or Text to match its TextLimit. It's not as straightforward as an HTML input. Direct link to snippet.

Linux Today links:

• Eroding the meaning of "open source", IBM-style. WAS Community Edition is based on Apache Geronimo, but it's not open source per se. The article suggests that IBM doesn't mind reaping the benefits of open-source kudos by blurring the lines and exploiting proprietary code's associations with 'open source', 'open standards' etc etc. Naaaah.
• iTWire: Are we finally seeing the year of the Linux desktop?. Pffff. The year of the Linux desktop has been 'any year now' for at least half a decade.
• Ars Technica: Mozilla's plan for improving Firefox user retention rates. "According to Mozilla, only fifty percent of the people who download Firefox actually try the browser and only about half of the people who try it continue to use it"

• Vince Huston: OO design, Java, C++. Detailed design patterns discussion.
• Eclipse data binding with java beans. If you pretend that an Eclipse editor is like a web form, then you'd have a formToBean() style method somewhere when you want to sync form and underlying data. You could register listeners and continuously update the bean as text is being edited. Either way, the issue is hooking into the process so that you can do error handling in a way that flows and isn't too much effort. This needs more reading.
• Dave Jones: wake on lan "I like automation."

Roman Shaposhnik: The Problem with Threads (via Tim Bray). In a sentence:

What POSIX shared memory threading model does is it turns a fundamentally determimistic von Neumann architecture on its head by wreaking havoc on how memory gets used during computation to store intermediate results.