The digital security infrastructure

Doc Searls notes a good summary of the state of digital security infrastructure. Some of the flavors he lists I've never even heard of—a nice chance to read something new and different and yet the same old thing.

Microsoft is dead, long live Microsoft

I've seen Microsoft put the kibosh to its own obit too many times to let myself any longer have hope. Nonetheless, those of you who still think defeating the Eye of Redmond is possible can take heart in this article from The Enquirer. I fear it is more likely to belong in this Enquirer.

A great link for automated testing

Manageability has a great list of automated testing tools for Java. If you have a need for this sort of thing (and anyone programming in Java who says they are without a need is pulling your leg), this is the list for you.

JDK 1.5

Are you ready for JDK 1.5? Members of JavaLoby may preview the alpha as long as you follow the stipulations. Sun is looking for feedback. Go forth, and backfeed.

Careful what you wisk for

The Web Starter Kit (Wisk) project is now open for business on SourceForge. Their are no web pages (yet) but I hope to upload the starting code base into CVS over the weekend.

OOPs

Do not let writing code get in the way of solving the problem.

Re: Web Starter Kit

I didn't think I'd been the first to think of something like the Web Starter Kit. Software Craftsman has the same idea. (Also see his neat idea for finding unused Java classes.)

My name is ...

Fellow ThoughtWorker Mike Mason hits it on the head:

We realised that ThoughtWorks isn’t a consultancy — it’s a self-help group for developers who are really testers. We should have these meetings where we sit round in a circle and say stuff like “My name’s Mike and I’m test infected.” I’ve been writing code with lots of tests ever since joining ThoughtWorks, and I don’t think I could go back…

Amen, brother. Test-driven development really is faster, better cheaper.

Web Starter Kit

I'm considering putting to together a "Web Starter Kit" (WSK or wisk) for starting J2EE webapp projects. Basically, it would be all the technology which goes into iteration 0 of such a project, all hooked together to help others get a jump start. It becomes tiresome to redo the same week's worth of plumbing on every new project. I'm thinking of constructing it with:

• Maven
• Tomcat
• JSPWiki
• JUnit
• HttpUnit
• JWebUnit or Cactus
• JCoverage
• CruiseControl
• Struts + Tiles
• XDoclet
• Hibernate or JDO

What would you add? What would you change?

Swing low

These days I do mostly Java web programming, but I also worked on PCGen for a few years where I cut my teeth on Swing (Rule #1 of large, distributed open-source programming: change as little as possible to get your work done — this is the opposite of close-at-hand XP programming where refactoring rules; I'm embarrassed to even contemplate this). And BileBlog has it right: Swing programming is hard. I never felt completely happy with the results, always with the niggle in the back of my mind that my work could be done better. It was easy to fall into custom widgets (why is JTabbedPane so minimally functional?) and such without addressing the bigger picture. Perhaps someday I can get back to the problem.

Does maven suck?

I am presently enamored by maven, more specifically, by its very nice report generation when I run maven site. But I also like to read the other side, and Why Maven Sucks is about as "other side" as it comes. Welcome to The BileBlog. :-)