Month: February 2007

Wacky Ideas 3: Object life-cycle support

By jonskeet

No, don’t leave yet! This isn’t another article about non-deterministic finalization, RAII etc. That’s what we almost always think of when someone mentions the object life-cycle, but I’m actually interested in the other end of the cycle – the “near birth” end. We often take it as read that when an object’s constructor has completed successfully, the object should be ready to use. However, frameworks and technologies like Spring and XAML often make it easier to create an object and then populate it with dependencies, configuration etc. Yes, in some cases it’s more appropriate to have a separate configuration class … Continue reading Wacky Ideas 3: Object life-cycle support

Wacky Ideas 2: Class interfaces

By jonskeet

(Disclaimer: I’m 99% sure I’ve heard someone smarter than me talking about this before, so it’s definitely not original. I thought it worth pursuing though.) One of the things I love about Java and C# over C/C++ is the lack of .h files. Getting everything in the right place, only doing the right things in the right files, and coping with bits being included twice etc is a complete pain, particularly if you only do it every so often rather than it being part of your everyday life. Unfortunately, as I’ve become more interface-based, I’ve often found myself doing effectively … Continue reading Wacky Ideas 2: Class interfaces

Wacky Ideas 1: Inheritance is dead, long live mix-ins!

By jonskeet

(Warning: I’ve just looked up “mix-in” on Wikipedia and their definition isn’t quite what I’m used to. Apologies if I’m using the wrong terminology. What I think of as a mix-in is a proxy object which is used to do a lot of the work the class doing the mixing says it does, but preferably with language/platform support.) I’ve blogged before about my mixed feelings about inheritance. It’s very useful at times, but the penalty is usually very high, and if you’re going to write a class to be derived from, you need to think (and document) about an awful … Continue reading Wacky Ideas 1: Inheritance is dead, long live mix-ins!

Wacky Ideas – Introduction

By jonskeet

I’ve been having a few wacky ideas recently, and I think it’s time to put them to virtual paper. They’re mostly around how we think about OO, and how future languages and platforms could do things. I very much doubt that any of them are new. I suspect they’ve been mulled over by people who really know how to think about these things, and then write papers about them. Probably using TeX. I’m not going to that much effort, so there will be several things I haven’t thought through at all. I won’t go so far as to say that’s … Continue reading Wacky Ideas – Introduction

What would make a good Java book?

By jonskeet

So, Groovy in Action has been out for a little while, and I’m missing it – or rather, book writing. I’d like my next project to be a solo effort, almost certainly on Java. However, I’m interested in hearing what you good folks think would make a good Java book. I’ve got some ideas myself, but I’d rather hear unprejudiced opinions first. (I may be soliciting more feedback at a later date, of course.) So, shoot – what would you like me to write about?

Build and config friendliness counts

By jonskeet

Yesterday, I bought a Toppy PVR when my Tivo died. The details of what it does are irrelevant (although quite fun). The important thing is that it’s very hackable – so there are lots of extensions and access programs available. While the Windows ones are typically in binary form, the Linux ones aren’t. The Toppy gives access via a USB port, and programs either access that directly or use FTP to transfer files to it via an intermediate server which basically converts FTP requests into whatever protocol the USB connection uses. Now, I have a Linkstation with the OpenLink firmware installed on … Continue reading Build and config friendliness counts