The Wicket team has released version 1.1 with a bunch of improvements over version 1.0. Some of these include:
- JavaScript and CSS support for components
- AJAX request handling support
- Simplified choice component
- Markup inheritance
Among many others.
I have not used Wicket yet beyond a very superficial test, but it looks like a very easy framework to use for creating web applications in Java. I am hoping that over the Christmas break I will have time to try it out. If all the press is correct, I believe it to be, then this is the up-and-coming framework that everyone should be evaluating for web development.
Slashdot has an article stating the Oracle will offer a free database version of 10g. This could be interesting. I hope it is easier to install than the full database. Either way, I will be downloading it and playing with it. Adding Oracle to my resume would definitely be a benefit.
Javalobby.org has put online free videos of the JavaZone 2005 Java Conference. I have watched several of the videos so far and they are definitely worth checking out. The quality is not that great on some of them and it is hard to read the powerpoint slides, but they do contain a lot of useful information if you are a Java developer.
I highly recommend either of the talks by Bruce Tate or the discussion on Test-Driven Development by Keith Donald.
Currently I am taking a software engineering course in which the prof is attempting to teach Extreme Programming (XP). As part of the class, all the students have to divide into small groups (of 5-6 students) and create a “real world” application. This assignment must be done using the principles of XP. The problem is that pair programming does not work in a school/university environment.
Why? Simply because everyone is too busy. XP requires a fair bit of dedication, a coach, and people who are in the same room for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. At school, you have people who are never together for more then a few hours, who all have different schedules, and all have different methods for working. Some like to program at night, some during the day, and some program only on Saturday’s during the hours of 3pm – 11:59pm with the exception of 5:30-6:00 pm when they are having a snack.
In addition, you also have people of very different abilities. Some students are incredible programmers and some are dunces–most are somewhere in between, but the continuum still exists. So when people get together to pair program, you spend most of your time explaining what the code does so far and very little time actually creating new code.
Dedication to the project is the last stumbling block in the way of pair programming at school. In any average group, I would guess that you only actually have about half the students really dedicated to the project and the rest are only doing it to get the marks. And you always have at least one student who simply doesn’t care and is hoping to slide by by letting everyone else do the work.
Therefore, pair programming does not work at school. I think my course would be much better served trying to teach a more open source model of distributed development instead of XP. Just my two cents on one of the classes that I am taking.
If you want to check out what took place at Macromedia MAX this year, then check out the videos that they have put online.
In particular, check out the Ze Frank clip at the beginning of Day One and the Closing Remarks for Day One.
This semester, I am taking an Autonomous Mobile Robotics course at school. I had no idea how much time is required to build a stupid little robot that won’t fall of a table and drive through obstacles. It is starting to consume my life. This is the reason for no posts so far this week. 
Being sick last week hasn’t helped either. I am slowly digging out from under the back up though. The downside is that I have had to make a few compromises and skipped a few small quizzes in order to catch up. Look for more posts in the future.
Martin Fowler has posted a small entry on his bliki entitled AnecdotalEvidence in which he makes the point that experience matters.
The following quote is what stood out to me.
Last year I was involved on the program committee for a conference and reviewed three papers, all of which followed the same basic theme. Each one discussed an idea that could be used to improve software development. The crucial flaw in each of them was that the authors had not tried their idea out – even once. That’s why I voted for rejection on all of them.
The reason that it stood out is that I have professors at school that are like this. My software engineering prof is trying to teach us XP without ever having tried it himself. I asked him at the beginning of the course what his professional experience in XP was and his reply was that he had none. He had simply read a few books and expects us to put it into practice. As such, some of what he is teaching is old and slightly out of date with the current thinking on XP. This begs the question, how can you teach something that you have never tried yourself?