Monday, December 12, 2011

Java Processors

As explained in Wikipedia - A Java processor is the implementation of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) in hardware.

However, few people know that new Polish construction appeared recently: processor called Warszawa cosntrucred by Polish company http://www.gryftechnologia.com.

Warszawa Processor

During execution of Java program, instructions written in byte code and arguments are sent to instruction decoder. 30% of byte code instructions are realized directly on hardware. The rest is translated to assembly language because of their complicity and additional features of Java Virtual Machine.

An article about the new processor (in Polish) can be found here.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Web Design Techniques

I found recently an interesting speach about good web design techniqes. Putting it mostly for myself for reference.
http://ontwik.com/ui/design-for-developers-making-your-frontend-suck-less/

The presentation for this can be downloaded from Idan Gazit blog.

In context of good color design I found some time ago a color scheme generator here. You can read generated RGB for free.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Global Code Retreat Day 2011

First Code Retreat took place in Java User Group Lodz on 3rd December.
Under vigilant supervision of Piotr Przybylak 12 programmers were improving their skills in context of Test Driven Development.
From 10.00 to 16.00 (roughly) in the office of Mobica company we went through several sessions, 45-minutes each, during which in pairs (different every session) we tried to implement Game of Life. Unfortunatelly noone succeeded to finish the application, but that was not the aim. The goal was to be comfortable with every line of code, to make it ideal given certain assets (such as e.g.: using no setters and getters, having rich domain model, in contrary to anemic domain model)

How does pair-programming look like? What is TDD about? It is well reflected in this conversation.

Every participant of today's event gained something new. I learnt a few Eclipse shortcuts, creating code templates in it, different aproaches to the same problem (objective vs. structural) a few useful libraries (Mockito, Hamcrest) and testing Android application ( thanks Mariusz :))
By chance a few positions worth reading appeared:
Wzorce projektowe. Analiza kodu sposobem na ich poznanie.
Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software ( other books of Michael also worth reading)
Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation
Working Effectively with Legacy Code
Holub on Patterns: Learning Design Patterns by Looking at Code

The above list will be updated once I get more positions.

In the meantime we Skype-connected to Code retreat groups in Barcelona and Cracow.
I have a very good impression about this event and would attend similar ones more often.

Learning in practice - priceless, that's something what you can't buy. For everything else there is Master Card ;)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdMzngWchDk&w=420&h=315]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d6yIquOKQ0&w=420&h=315]


"...it's cats that are complicated"

Photos from event at Picasa Gallery