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Once one person catches an STD, it seems to spread quickly. STD, of course, stands for Shiny Things Development.

— Agile Artisans::home

Over the last few months I've been thinking about this exact problem, at my new gig we have a development process that seems to be much closer to sterile than agile. Given that I'm still fairly new to the team, I've been thinking about how to broach the subject that maybe the itch we're feeling might a symptom of something a little more serious, and that if we keep picking at the scabs we're never going to heal properly.

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I'd love a TV specific application that handled these streams for me with a bit more ease than simply having multiple Quick Time players open.

As I've not yet found any compelling reasons to get Freeview, and my normal TV reception is nothing more than snow this is the best way to see the coverage.

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Unlike JSP pages which generate and compile .java files on the fly, GXP generates .java files up front as part of your build process and forms a type safe API to the rest of your application to use. Just as Apache Wicket brings type safety to your web applications Session and Pages, GXP brings it the same power to your templates.

A short example is the Work Item Summary template:

<gxp:template name='com.theoryinpractice.timetrackr.gxp.WorkItemSummary'
              xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'
              xmlns:gxp='http://google.com/2001/gxp'>
  <gxp:import package="java.util"/>
  <gxp:import package="com.theoryinpractice.timetrackr.vo"/>
  <gxp:import package="com.theoryinpractice.timetrackr.pages"/>
  <gxp:param name="reportForDate" type='String'/>
  <gxp:param name="formattedTimeFor" type='String'/>
  <gxp:param name="activities" type='List{ActivityReport}'/>
  ...

Once generated and compiled, this is called in java with:

List<ActivityReport> activities = new ArrayList<ActivityReport>();
...
StringBuilder buffer = new StringBuilder();
WorkItemSummary.write(
  buffer, new GxpContext(Locale.getDefault()),
  reportForDate,
  TimeFormat.format(userManager.calculateTimeForUser(user, Boolean.FALSE)),
  activities
);

The generated API is clean and simple to use, a single method to call with the required parameters and you're away laughing. Comparing this with how I've used velocity and freemarker in the past, I can already see several benefits:

• You break your template, you break your build.
• If you add/remove parameters to a template without changing the code, you break your build (I'd rather have a build broken in 5 places, than have a deployment break in the 1 that was used by QA guy #3)
• Templates are now first-class citizens in your application
• Templates can easily be bundled/modularized (and safely used across class loaders - OSGi I'm thinking of you!)

The GXP template may be a little bit more wordy than the original freemarker version, but the safety it brings to the build is well worthy the XML.

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The more I revisit the projects code the more semi-broken pieces I find which will be patched up and improved over the coming weeks.

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• Change imports from wicket.* to org.apache.wicket.*
• Replace ISessionFactory getSessionFactory() with Session newSession() on the Application class.
• Revert component constructor changes - Wicket 2.0 took the parent in the constructor where as 1.4 uses the original scheme.
• Add generics to Model instances.

type
  // method reference
  TProc = reference to procedure(x: Integer);               

procedure Call(const proc: TProc);
begin
  proc(42);
end;

Use:

var
  proc: TProc;
begin
  // anonymous method
  proc := procedure(a: Integer)
  begin
    Writeln(a);
  end;               

  Call(proc);
  readln
end.

I'd have loved have had both of these features back in the day when I was still doing Delphi. As much as I no longer like the Pascal syntax, I love how cleanly the anonymous method declaration sits within the natural flow of things (although I'm not sure an inline method directly on the call to Call() would sit well).

My only question is, if Pascal can evolve why can't java?

Sure the Tiburon release can do this because the underlying .NET VM now supports the functionality, but thats not the point. Ok?

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How old were you when you started programming?

Way way way back in the day my parents purchased me and my brother a Fountain Video Games unit when I was around 11-12, later we got a Commodore Vic 20 and the discovery of BASIC soon followed, later that year I won a Commodore C=16 at the opening of Smith and Smiths in Napier simply by standing in the right spot and the right time.

How did you get started in programming?

By now I was well and truly the outcast as all my friends now had C64's, still - I continued to mess with BASIC and making my own games and programs and eventually began to hit the limits of the machine, eventually we upgraded to the Plus/4 (the C64 was considered, but given we already had a wealth of games for the C16 the +4 was a better option at the time) and I started dabbling with 6502 assembler after my 3rd form computer studies teacher gave me a photocopied assembly language guide.

A few years later my friends and I all upgraded to Amigas and thats where the fun began - AMOS game creator, Devpac Macro Assembler, the DEMO scene, and the best text editor ever written: Cygnus Ed.

Rolling on a few more years and I "upgraded" to a PC-XT when I went 'tech and started learning about databases and the "real" world of computing.

What was your first language?

As mentioned above, my first language was BASIC on the Commodore Vic 20, followed by 6502 assembler.

What was the first real program you wrote?

What defines a "real" program? If I discount the various programs and databases I wrote as part of school or tech projects, the first "programs" would have been a simple games I wrote on the C16/Plus4 (simple sprite based shoot'em'up games) and the Amiga (scrolling text demos/intro's for our local warez group, and later simple database apps with Superbase).

What was your first professional programming gig?

Discounting the programs I worked on at my first job, the first commercial program "I" wrote would have been the Food Bank database system for the local community food bank; a Delphi 1 application which tracked food parcel requests and the phone number/address of the requestees - the applications main purpose was to match reused phone numbers and/or addresses for potential 'food request fraud'. The project was fun, but as a voluntary community service they could only pay in petrol and food vouchers.

What languages have you used since you started programming?

BASIC, 6502 assembler, 68000 assembler, Superbase, Turbo C, Turbo Pascal, Quick Basic 7 (woo compiled BASIC!), Visual Basic, Delphi, Python, Java, Dolphin Smalltalk, Javascript, HTML, CSS, XML, XSL.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?

Most definitely, but I would taken more of an interest in non-code areas of development such as project management, requirements gathering and people mongering.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?

Experiment, and don't be afraid to break shit along the way - learning to fix things is often the best way to learn.

What’s the most fun you’ve ever had… programming?

There's three distinct "fun" moments stuck in my memory, the first was spending time with dad and my brother typing in line after line of HEX code from magazines to get new games on the machine. I remember dad spending night after night typing in a new game for me for my birthday, only to find that the game didn't work and that the next months magazine had a "FIX" for the typo's in the previous issue (my first patch - I remember it well).

The next chapter in "fun" was back in the days of the Amiga scene, all night coding sessions messing with graphics and sound - Paula, Agnus, Denise, and The Copper - the fact that Agnus was replaced by the Fat Agnus was prophetic of a lot of 'people' in computing'.

Most recently that fun returned with the discovery Smalltalk - not so much the language itself, but the environment as a whole - the ability to change code on the fly and re-run live code opened my eyes to an entirely new way of coding. Sadly, it's now spoilt me in my day job :(

Now, let’s tag someone else:

So lets tag some folk: Richard Clark, Michael Lucas-Smith, Cedric Beust

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The session was well received and generated some interesting discussions, thanks for attending ;-)

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to this:

Less hair, more me.

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In true continuous integration form, not even starting the conference Saturday morning kept the timetable from being changed and reworked during the day - with sessions continually being bumped, combined, or moved around based on peoples feedback of the just completed sessions:

Having been through four Open Space style conferences/events (two CITCON's, Kiwifoo, and Baacamp) and the upcoming Baacamp 2 I'm firmly in love with this style of event over the more traditional conference.

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• Withdrawn and disconnected

If Smalltalk is dead, why is it so popular?

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Following a kick arse show from Finland's Children of Bodom I headed off over the ditch for this years Continuous Integration and Testing (CITCON) conference in Melbourne. I ended up staying at the Somerset on Elizabeth St, a short 4-5 block walk to the conference location ( which ended up being the Jasper Hotel ). Both venues easily exceeded my expectations:

Whilst I never used either of the flat panel TVs in the lounge/bedroom, this was the perfect place to crash at 2am after the continuous drinking sessions after the conference.

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What I found greeting me was 3-4 messages with "off line IM messages" from twitter - 795 lines in one, 1675 in another, and a few other.

Could it be that a simple scaling technique twitter could use is to follow a users jabber presence and NOT send them thousands of off line messages? I had actually thought they already did, but I guess not. Surely only sending IM messages when the user is online would lower their resource consumption tremendously.

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