Rich Client Technologies

Still trying to find my way into the Rich client technologies, I just read those articles (in french):

• Quel client riche Java sur le poste de l’utilisateur?
• Client riche: l’inévitable fusion des architectures client-serveur et web

So fo me the main concurrent are:

• Linux Desktop
• SuSE Desktop
• Desktop System (JDS)
• xalm (Longhorn)
• WCTRE
• XUL de Mozilla
• Flex de Macromedia
• Acrobat Reader
• Java:
• SwiXML,
• Thinlet,
• SwingML,
• JellySwing,
• AUIML,
• xmlgui,
• Speed GJ,
• xWidglets,
• Ultrid,
• Altio
• Jndc

Now wich one do you choose ?! (take a bet...)

Craig McClanahan Presentation

I went to a presentation of Sun Java Studio Creator and JSF.
Nice demo. I hadn't tested Creator yet.
It's based on Netbeans and jsp, it take full use of them. (If you don't want to use jsf, not the right tool)
I already had a demo of Visual Studio and asp.net.
Sun created the equivalent of VS for Rapid developpement

It's a nice tool:

• start quickly J2EE developpement
• minimum requirement for the team
• develop J2EE webapp more like VB applications
• doesn't depend on Sun server (even if it's tightly coupled with creator)
• help newbies by providing places where they can put code without thinking to much
  

but with some restrictions:

• not enought thrid part products integration (they are working on it...)
  
• Sun make many choices for you (just has Microsoft do with VS)
• jsf
• 1 to 1 relation between a page and a bean representing the page
• validation process
  
• help you (to much) to copy/paste components (instead of making a service locator for example)
• doesn't prevent bad coding...
  

I would clearly consider Creator for small, rapid developpement project but eclipse is still my favorite IDE because of the plugin comunity.
But for a team of java newbies or corporate developpers that would clearly help to get started.
But once you've started with jsf, I will be hard to abandon it...

blog entry of craig presentation
An other vision of this presentation by sami Jabber - dotnetguru (I don't agree with him but I don't want to flame his blog ;))
A better blog entry in my opinion

Refactoring Unit Tests

I'm currently refactoring some of my unit tests I made when I first started using JUnit framework.

2 things stroke me at first sight:

• I make better unit tests now:

1. I test only usefull thing,
2. they depend less upon other things (ex: a file present in file system)
3. they are clearer

• Using Unit tests forced me to create new entries in my legacy classes, now unit testing is easier. I don't have to refactor a class before starting to unit test it.
  

Renaming JUnit Tests

Using JUnit as it advantages but also it drowbacks...
Actualy it's more wsad 5.0 that could be improve.

When I decide to Rename or Refactor a set of Classes, I have to take care of the classes but also the ClassesTests.

For Exemple, let say I have classe called Foo and a classe FooTest.
If I rename Foo using refactoring menu from wsad, I have to take care of renaming FooTest myself.
It seems obvious but during the first days of programming, when you create your classes from scratch I usually rename my classes often until I'm satisfy by the classes name.

I also refactor and rename often the methods names and the problem is the same I have to rename the testMethod() method in the Test classe... (It is not allways obvious when You only added an "s" to the method name...)
It would be great if refactor menu could also take care of the Tests classes...

I'll try with eclipse 3 to see if they improve that point.

Functionnal tests help to refactor

After a few month, uning JMeter for my functionnal/integration tests and having included them in the continius build process, I can see major changes in every day work.
First (I knew this one would come up that's why I did it ;-) ) there are fewer bugs (almost none), more self confidence in code and application stability.
Secondly (I hadn't thought of this one first) It helps refactoring since you gain testing time. I can now use this time for refactoring.

Everybody at work says I'm "test addict", I think back then when I hated testing (but did it)...
Automatisation of tests is far more interesting!

Back from Holidays

Back to Work and Coffee after a holidays'week!
Always good to start with a little stand-up meeting with a coffee to know about the recent changes...

Agile Manifesto

Some many famous people in here: http://www.agilemanifesto.org/!
It's like some kind of a freedom declaration act!

Eclipse Cobol

Funny! I spoke yesterday with someone doing cobol... and they have exactly the same problems that me in Java about code that has not been indented neither commented...
Hopefully we have tools such as eclipse to format code automaticly!

Therefore I tried to use cobol plugin for eclipse. Seems nice but no indentation :(
May because of the way you need to write cobol with all the column and stuff...

Refactoring all day long

I spend my entire day refactoring duplicated Date classes.
Thank you JUnit!
But if people before me (and also the actual team) had spoken between us a little more, those classes wouldn't have been duplicated in the first place.
May be I should try to use PairProgramming a little more (even if I don't like it much).

Search and Found

I'm glad to have found DBUnit. Because on (only) two tests, even if i didn't know back then, I had started building my own "DBUnit framework-like"...
I refactored those two tests with DBUnit and now it much more clearer!
That brings me to the point that refactoring tests is also very important since they can esealy become complicate and then hard to extends...

About 2 years ago, I thought learning a new product was not always worst the time investment.
But now I think, with a minimum technical background, learning such things is always good and end up focusing only on the real problems.