Chris Johnston

Joe Rinehart has posted an entry on his website called “Don’t learn CF. Or any other language”. The general idea of the article is that it is better to learn the concepts behind programming instead of simply learning the syntax of any one particular language. This allows a developer to move from language to language instead of being tied down to a single language. Instead of learning the different commands (a good IDE or reference book can help with that), try and learn the concepts that are applicable across all languages.

In essence I agree with this. Object-Oriented Analysis and Design is not limited to just Java or C#, it can be used on any OO language. Therefore, if you learn OOA-D, you should be able to apply it to any language. The same thing goes for design patterns. In addition, every language has its own way of hangling threads, events, and data structures. It is simply a matter of learning the principles and then applying them to whatever language you are using.

However, in practice, this seems to be a lot easier to say than it is to do. I know a lot of different concepts that go across the language barrier and are universal. However, I find that as I move from language to language, there are subtle differences between how things are done across languages. It is learning these subtle differences that takes the time. In addiiton, I find that as I move across languages, I have to try and get myself into the correct headspace for that language. If I have been doing a lot of Java programming and then try to move to CFMX, php, or C#, I have to get my head back into the required space for the language and relearn a lot of the nuances for that language.

Then again, it may just be me.

Where do you go for inspiration when you have to come up with a new design?

I have a several different things that I do; (1) I have a folder in my bookmarks for cool web sites, (2) I visit the CSS Vault, and (3) I visit the CSS Zen Garden. However, a lot of the sites in the first option are bookmarked from the other two, but it still helps. Eventually I will collect screen shots of all the sites in the folder.

When I was studying graphic arts, the professors all tried to convice us that one thing we all needed was a filing cabinet full of cut out of ads that we liked. Then, when we were faced with the task of coming up with a new design, the first place we should go is to this filing cabinet. This was to serve as our inspiration. I guess my bookmark folder serves this purpose.

Java.net has posted an article on configuring Hibernate to work with CMT (Container Manager Transactions) in JBoss and WebLogic. This article is an introduction and contains a complete working application that details how to setup CMT in Hibernate and JBoss or WebLogic.

Although there are some poor implementation choices when in comes to Hibernate (i.e., creating the SessionFactory in each method), the overall article is well written and easy to follow. The fact that all the source code is available for download at the end of the article is a huge plus. One problem that I have with Hibernate is that all the documentation contains are small code fragments. It is up to the reader to figure out how best to use those fragments in their application. Having an entire application makes it very easy to see how everything works together.

I have been researching Service-Oriented Architecture lately and decided to post a bunch of links here to newbie friendly tutorials and articles on the subject.

• An Introduction to Service-Oriented Architecture from a Java Developer Perspective
• Service-Oriented Architecture: Beyond Web Services
• Service Oriented Architecture - Part 1
• What is Service-Oriented Architecture?
• Opening the Black Box of Integration: Moving toward a standardized integration architecture
• IBM’s DeveloperWorks site on SOA and Web Services

Slowly, slowly my linux server returns to the way I like it. I had to replace the motherboard on my server as the old one seems to have died. Well, perhaps died is a bit strong as the board will still post, but doing anything beyond that is a stretch sometimes. Generally, the computer would get part way through booting Knoppix or running Memtest86 and then lock solid. Memtest86 would simply stop working and spit out a stack trace showing the state of all the cpu registers. I swapped everything out and tried different components in their place until the only constant left was the motherboard. As a result, Monday saw me going to my favorite computer store to purchase a brand new Mobo — the Asus A7N8X-X nForce 2 Motherboard.

I now have the computer put back together and Mandrake 10.1 installed once again and everything seems to be working much better (the computer has been running for about 20 hours and has yet to lock). Now all I have to do is go through the much longer process of getting everything set back up and configured the way I like it.

Speller Pages, an open source web spell checker, is a very cool piece of software that I am definitely going to have to figure out how to hack into my version of WordPress. It allows you to add a “Check Spelling” button to a form and a text area. When the button is pressed, it pops up a window that is almost the same as the spell checker in Word. This makes it very easy to use. Speller Pages then goes through and checks the spelling of all the words in the text area and provides suggestions for any mispelled words. When the check is complete, it replaces the text in the text area with the new text containing the correctly spelled words.

I briefly tried out a demo at the Speller Pages website and was very impressed. It was very simple to use and caught every one of the words that I mispelled. Even better was the fact that the first suggestion for the correct spelling was always correct. Granted, my spelling mistakes were not all that hard, but it was still impressive.