For a couple of weeks now I have been an ex-ThoughtWorker rather than a ThoughtWorker. It turns out there are a few of us, and Adwale Oshineye has thoughtfully created an alumni aggregator at blogs.thoughtworks.com/alumni. Being a consultant can require a big travel commitment, so for a lot of people consulting has a limited lifespan.… Continue reading The Place to Be
Weighing in on the Gosling flame war over scripting languages
I want to way in on this flame war that James Gosling has triggered with his mild criticism of scripting languages. I think it is unfair and unhelpful. Here is my two cents worth. I am still feeling my way on Ruby and Ruby on Rails. I spent a half day with Prag Dave, have… Continue reading Weighing in on the Gosling flame war over scripting languages
ehcache-1.2 beta 5 released
Today I released ehcache-1.2 beta 5. Quite a few people have been playing with the new features. I think the whole listener area has been very well road tested now. Ditto with the DiskStore performance redesign. I am also very happy that people are playing with the distributed cache stuff. Fixed a couple of bugs… Continue reading ehcache-1.2 beta 5 released
Comparative Cache Performance Numbers
Some guys have created a java cache test tool called cache4j_perfomance_tester. The results for ehcache-1.1 and ehcache-1.2 follow. According to their test methodology both versions of ehcache are the fastest for all three scenarios. Compared with oscache, ehcache was 4 times faster for two of the scenarios and twice as fast for one. I find… Continue reading Comparative Cache Performance Numbers
Developing a project site with Maven 2.0
The last week or so I have been developing a new version of the http://ehcache.sf.net project web site with Maven 2.0. Why? The old site featured a couple of toilet roll web pages, the longest of which was 2026 lines. That’s a long toilet roll. With the upcoming release of 1.2 and a lot more… Continue reading Developing a project site with Maven 2.0
Java vs Ruby: the keystroke effect of good IDEs
Years ago I used to use vi for all of my programming. I also used JEdit for a while. I remember being in a Sun conference about 7 years ago when the speaker asked for a show of hands as to whether the assembed programmers were using text editors or IDEs. About 90% were using… Continue reading Java vs Ruby: the keystroke effect of good IDEs
Going Web 2.0
I do not normally take to buzz words, hype and shiny new toys. These things usually annoy me. I do however think there is something to Web 2.0. I don’t want to go into what is meant by that here. See Tim O’Reilly’s landmark essay for a definition. If you look at the technologies that… Continue reading Going Web 2.0
A patent on digital computing
Last year I attended a meeting of the ACM at HP in San Jose. The topic was the early history of computing. During the session the presenter touched on a patent court case for a patent on digital computing that had occurred in 1973. I was not exactly up with the latest tech news back… Continue reading A patent on digital computing
Whats up with SourceForge?
Something seems to be up with SourceForge. I have been using it heavily this week. CVS has been down three times for extended periods. The Admin web site has been down 4 times. This is seriously interrupting me! There are two possibilities: This is just a run of bad luck Sourceforge is underfunded To explore… Continue reading Whats up with SourceForge?
Release early, release often.
Linus Torvalds said right from the beginning “Release early, release often”. This seems to be a critical requirement for open source projects to attract collaborators. There is a whole chapter on this in The Cathedral & The Bazaar, the classic open source text. Having released ehcache-1.2beta3 with the distributed stuff in, some old collaborators and… Continue reading Release early, release often.