I found out earlier this week that I am presenting at my J2EE study group one week earlier than I had thought. Therefore, I expect this week’s entries to be pretty light. I am hoping to gain lots of insight into legacy connectivity for J2EE through presenting this topic.

Once in a while you have those experiences that you know you are going to remember forever and probably tell your kids about, if you have kids. If you end up not having kids, that’s not the end of the world. Tell somebody else’s kids; you get to tell them cool things (to you, at least) and then you don’t have to deal with them outside of that. Anyway, I was able to attend Bob Edwards’ visit to the Conant Arts Center at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta tonight.

Perhaps the name Bob Edwards doesn’t ring a bell for you right away. That’s OK, I have the same feeling every time someone asks me what I thought of the game last night. Bob Edwards has been the voice of Morning Edition on National Public Radio (NPR) for about 30 years. My memories of Bob’s voice go back to my early teens.
(more…)

Today was the first-ever conference for the Atlanta Java Users Group (AJUG), titled DevCon 2004. It was great; our president Burr Sutter lined up a pretty impressive array of speakers, including Andy Hunt of Pragmatic Programmer fame and Neal Ford, author of the recent Manning title The Art of Java Web Development. In case the term Pragmatic Programmer rings a bell, you may recall one of my earliest blog entries referring to Dave Thomas. He and Andy are the co-founders of the Pragmatic Programmer line of books. The stuff is wonderful; check it out.

We also had several of our local Java gurus who gave great sessions as well. A big thanks to the AJUG sponsors and all the speakers as well as the AJUG folks who pulled it all together.

If you want to see something really cool, keep an eye out for “Looking Glass”, a 3D Java desktop from Sun. I saw demos of it today, and a cross between XWindows, Mac OS X Quartz with Expos?, and Minority Report came to mind.

Hey, those of you who ever got hooked on Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda, question: did you know there was a Windows port of that game? Yeah, it’s called Zelda Classic and it is freeware from Armageddon Games. I stumbled upon it while reading links from a Slashdot story. I downloaded it and installed it onto a Windows 2000 instance in Virtual PC on my PowerBook. It is quite true to the original; I had a blast playing it.

The trouble is that I blew a quick six hours doing that when I should have been going through my Java material. Now I am sucking wind for Monday night’s J2EE study group.

I had a couple of Borders coupons to burn, so I spent Friday afternoon checking out books. Rarely do I read a whole first chapter of a book before deciding to buy it. When I picked up Bitter Java, I was into the second chapter before I realized it. If you haven’t seen this book, check it out.

When you have intermediate to advanced skill in one application development platform, switching to another one can be frustrating. Many books exist for both the novice and the guru, but few exist for the “yeah, I have the separation of concerns thing down, so how is it done in this environment?” type of individual.

Enter Bitter Java. The book has been around for a couple of years. The follow-up title, Bitter EJB, has been a huge success. Bitter Java starts with a poorly-authored BBS app and walks through refactoring the solution, using the app as a case study for antipatterns. I would think that even Java developers with a few years under their belt could stand to benefit from the book. Bruce’s interspersing of outdoor adventure excerpts also make the volume an even better read.