Weblogs
Browser makers walled javascript garden:
Posted by robogeek on August 27, 2008 at 12:07 PST | Permalink
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OpenJDK in 10 yrs?:
Posted by robogeek on August 25, 2008 at 11:27 PST | Permalink
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R.I.P Usenet: 1980-2008 ?? Huh?:
Posted by robogeek on July 31, 2008 at 19:57 PST | Permalink
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Getting closer...:
Posted by robogeek on July 18, 2008 at 11:01 PST | Permalink
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Thoughts on Rich Internet Applications:
Posted by robogeek on July 15, 2008 at 17:01 PST | Permalink
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Free Java is nothing to yawn about:
Posted by robogeek on July 01, 2008 at 11:53 PST | Permalink
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On the evolution of the Java plugin:
Posted by robogeek on June 26, 2008 at 11:03 PST | Permalink
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Great milestone reached by OpenJDK on Fedora:
Posted by robogeek on June 19, 2008 at 14:34 PST | Permalink
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OpenJDK Regression Test Harness, also known as jtreg, now available as open source:
Posted by robogeek on May 02, 2008 at 12:14 PST | Permalink
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Open media and open screens:
Posted by robogeek on May 01, 2008 at 11:39 PST | Permalink
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Java 6 for OS X:
Posted by robogeek on April 29, 2008 at 15:43 PST | Permalink
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On hacking the OpenJDK:
Posted by robogeek on April 28, 2008 at 17:28 PST | Permalink
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Interplanetary migrations:
Posted by robogeek on April 25, 2008 at 10:13 PST | Permalink
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OpenJDK 6, tastes great, less filling!:
Posted by robogeek on April 24, 2008 at 17:51 PST | Permalink
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6u10beta is available.. please test it..!:
Posted by robogeek on April 16, 2008 at 16:52 PST | Permalink
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re: Into the light:
Posted by robogeek on April 08, 2008 at 14:35 PST | Permalink
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Duchesses, FOSDEM, International Womens Day, and diversity:
Posted by robogeek on March 07, 2008 at 11:41 PST | Permalink
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C U @ FOSDEM?:
Posted by robogeek on February 19, 2008 at 15:29 PST | Permalink
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The end of the beginning of OpenJDK6:
Posted by robogeek on February 14, 2008 at 12:21 PST | Permalink
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JSON versus XML:
Posted by robogeek on January 14, 2008 at 11:16 PST | Permalink
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Freeze Java?:
Posted by robogeek on January 10, 2008 at 12:31 PST | Permalink
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The Java programmer is without property:
Posted by robogeek on December 21, 2007 at 13:22 PST | Permalink
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Should 'Java' stay 'Java'?:
Posted by robogeek on December 17, 2007 at 13:14 PST | Permalink
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New PDF renderer project:
Posted by robogeek on December 13, 2007 at 12:01 PST | Permalink
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Scene graph API available under open source:
Posted by robogeek on December 11, 2007 at 15:39 PST | Permalink
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Give one Get one:
Posted by robogeek on December 03, 2007 at 11:26 PST | Permalink
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Creating multi-threaded Swing apps that consume web services:
Posted by robogeek on December 03, 2007 at 11:04 PST | Permalink
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What is Needed for the Next Level of Internet Applications?:
Posted by robogeek on November 26, 2007 at 12:08 PST | Permalink
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Closed device jail, and platform security:
Posted by robogeek on November 20, 2007 at 12:10 PST | Permalink
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Java freedom day:
Posted by robogeek on November 13, 2007 at 11:41 PST | Permalink
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A Brave New World:
Posted by robogeek on November 08, 2007 at 15:49 PST | Permalink
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That ol' Java java jing jing jing:
Posted by robogeek on November 08, 2007 at 15:48 PST | Permalink
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gphone is doomed? The Open Incompatible Handset Alliance?:
Posted by robogeek on November 07, 2007 at 12:06 PST | Permalink
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Freeing the Internet from the Web 'jail':
Posted by robogeek on November 04, 2007 at 12:49 PST | Permalink
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The If's and When's of Java 6 for Mac OS X 10.5:
Posted by robogeek on October 29, 2007 at 17:09 PST | Permalink
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The Freedom to get a shell prompt on an iPod Touch:
Posted by robogeek on October 26, 2007 at 11:59 PST | Permalink
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Open source green vehicles:
Posted by robogeek on October 23, 2007 at 17:52 PST | Permalink
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Web 3.0 ??:
Posted by robogeek on October 22, 2007 at 12:09 PST | Permalink
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OpenJDK Encumbrances being cleared:
Posted by robogeek on October 04, 2007 at 15:16 PST | Permalink
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Re: Stop the Insanity:
Posted by robogeek on September 25, 2007 at 14:56 PST | Permalink
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Really Idiotic Acronyms: RIA Approaches:
Posted by robogeek on September 14, 2007 at 10:57 PST | Permalink
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Dilbert mentions Java:
Posted by robogeek on September 07, 2007 at 15:37 PST | Permalink
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The Unix wars and Java compatibility:
Posted by robogeek on September 03, 2007 at 21:24 PST | Permalink
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Java is doomed to failure:
Posted by robogeek on August 27, 2007 at 11:29 PST | Permalink
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JDepend and code complexity:
Posted by robogeek on August 22, 2007 at 11:54 PST | Permalink
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Code for Freedom:
Posted by robogeek on August 16, 2007 at 15:19 PST | Permalink
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Java-in-browser availability:
Posted by robogeek on August 09, 2007 at 13:19 PST | Permalink
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Source code isn't text:
Posted by robogeek on August 08, 2007 at 17:08 PST | Permalink
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Re: Java: One Platform To Rule Them All?:
Posted by robogeek on August 06, 2007 at 09:04 PST | Permalink
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On the naming of Java releases:
Posted by robogeek on August 01, 2007 at 12:04 PST | Permalink
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AJAX application testing:
Posted by robogeek on July 30, 2007 at 14:14 PST | Permalink
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ANNOUNCING: Sun has open sourced its Java implementation, named OpenJDK:
Posted by robogeek on July 26, 2007 at 23:37 PST | Permalink
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JDK-Distros updated for JDK6u2:
Posted by robogeek on July 11, 2007 at 10:59 PST | Permalink
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A couple podcasts to listen to:
Posted by robogeek on July 09, 2007 at 15:51 PST | Permalink
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People don't care about the programming language used to write their apps?:
Posted by robogeek on July 06, 2007 at 07:10 PST | Permalink
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Apps on iPhone:
Posted by robogeek on June 14, 2007 at 09:06 PST | Permalink
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Java on OS X, it's not dead...:
Posted by robogeek on June 13, 2007 at 13:51 PST | Permalink
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Badness of open source business models:
Posted by robogeek on May 29, 2007 at 10:08 PST | Permalink
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The image resizing challenge:
Posted by robogeek on May 22, 2007 at 16:00 PST | Permalink
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Those frustrating bits of API:
Posted by robogeek on May 22, 2007 at 11:00 PST | Permalink
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Java and multimedia, round 2:
Posted by robogeek on May 18, 2007 at 12:01 PST | Permalink
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Closed versus open multimedia formats:
Posted by robogeek on May 17, 2007 at 14:29 PST | Permalink
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JavaFX and slimming the JRE:
Posted by robogeek on May 17, 2007 at 14:11 PST | Permalink
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What are your thoughts on the OpenJDK project:
Posted by robogeek on May 14, 2007 at 11:44 PST | Permalink
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What could Sun do with Java after Java7?:
Posted by robogeek on May 12, 2007 at 08:18 PST | Permalink
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Some OpenJDK answers:
Posted by robogeek on May 11, 2007 at 19:35 PST | Permalink
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Quality and Open Source:
Posted by robogeek on May 09, 2007 at 07:51 PST | Permalink
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OpenJDK out there, and already available as an ebuild on gentoo:
Posted by robogeek on May 08, 2007 at 16:17 PST | Permalink
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My initial JavaONE post.. hope to talk with many of you there:
Posted by robogeek on May 04, 2007 at 15:33 PST | Permalink
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Ubuntu and easily installable JDK's:
Posted by robogeek on May 01, 2007 at 16:16 PST | Permalink
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Opensville?:
Posted by robogeek on April 28, 2007 at 20:45 PST | Permalink
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Re: Swing versus SWT Thread Confinement:
Posted by robogeek on April 25, 2007 at 14:33 PST | Permalink
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Re: Java with apt-get, what's the scoop?:
Posted by robogeek on April 24, 2007 at 13:58 PST | Permalink
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Open, community developed, test suite for Java:
Posted by robogeek on April 23, 2007 at 18:06 PST | Permalink
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Test suites and harnesses, continued:
Posted by robogeek on April 13, 2007 at 15:58 PST | Permalink
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Internet OS living in a browser?:
Posted by robogeek on April 10, 2007 at 15:35 PST | Permalink
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An annoying misfeature of AJAX web applications:
Posted by robogeek on April 09, 2007 at 13:35 PST | Permalink
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Test suites and harnesses and tools:
Posted by robogeek on April 03, 2007 at 15:29 PST | Permalink
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Java Duchesses:
Posted by robogeek on April 02, 2007 at 12:48 PST | Permalink
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The Swiss Duke:
Posted by robogeek on April 02, 2007 at 11:14 PST | Permalink
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Process tracking in the OpenJDK project, looking at Scarab:
Posted by robogeek on March 26, 2007 at 15:20 PST | Permalink
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OpenJDK processes and artifcatual ponderings:
Posted by robogeek on March 23, 2007 at 16:30 PST | Permalink
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Re: A dozen tips for testing free software:
Posted by robogeek on March 20, 2007 at 04:23 PST | Permalink
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Re: 100% Java Quercus PHP engine running in GlassFish Java EE 5 Application Server...:
Posted by robogeek on March 13, 2007 at 01:43 PST | Permalink
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Visiting St. Petersburg:
Posted by robogeek on March 02, 2007 at 14:29 PST | Permalink
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Java DevJam meeting at FOSDEM:
Posted by robogeek on March 02, 2007 at 14:00 PST | Permalink
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An open quality team:
Posted by robogeek on February 05, 2007 at 15:26 PST | Permalink
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Roboduke:
Posted by robogeek on November 24, 2006 at 11:02 PST | Permalink
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Re: Concerns about GPL-licensed Java:
Posted by robogeek on November 14, 2006 at 21:55 PST | Permalink
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Yup, GPL:
Posted by robogeek on November 13, 2006 at 07:43 PST | Permalink
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Visual comparison in GUI testing, and a recent "horrible" regression:
Posted by robogeek on October 13, 2006 at 16:00 PST | Permalink
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Lessons in living from a quadrapalegic friend:
Posted by robogeek on October 09, 2006 at 14:35 PST | Permalink
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Re: Source-code management for an open JDK:
Posted by robogeek on September 27, 2006 at 12:06 PST | Permalink
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Re: Channeling Java SE 7:
Posted by robogeek on September 25, 2006 at 12:21 PST | Permalink
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Followup on bug tracker for open source JDK:
Posted by robogeek on September 16, 2006 at 07:21 PST | Permalink
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Bug tracking systems for use in open sourcing the JDK:
Posted by robogeek on September 12, 2006 at 16:51 PST | Permalink
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Good news, JRuby developers coming to Sun:
Posted by robogeek on September 07, 2006 at 17:24 PST | Permalink
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Is the Java vs PHP argument necessary?:
Posted by robogeek on August 28, 2006 at 15:42 PST | Permalink
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"Uh, is that the thing in my phone"?:
Posted by robogeek on August 28, 2006 at 14:23 PST | Permalink
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Re: Irritation and Open Source Java:
Posted by robogeek on August 21, 2006 at 21:39 PST | Permalink
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Java posse #078 feedback / clarification:
Posted by robogeek on August 21, 2006 at 20:19 PST | Permalink
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Open sourcing leads to incompatible forks?:
Posted by robogeek on August 16, 2006 at 14:16 PST | Permalink
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Moving towards the starting line: Okay, cool, we're finally making announcements about our open source plans.
We have 'portal' page collecting the open sourcing information. We have a forum for your feedback on the open sourcing of Java SE. There is discussion from Mark Reinhold, Danny Coward, Simon Phipps, Tom Marble, and perhaps you might think my earlier blog posting might be included on that list.
There are discussion threads on Javalobby, slashdot, Digg, osnews.com, TheServerSide.com,.
There's an interesting article at C|NET News which repeats the fallacy that Sun is a proprietary source company, when Sun has contributed lots of software to the open source world, and not just recently but throughout our history. Another at zdnet blogs relates some discussion made by Rich Green and Laurie Tolson at LinuxWorld yesterday. We haven't settled on licenses or governance models.
In another article at tech news world Simon Phipps is quoted saying "If I could snap my fingers and make [Java open source] happen tomorrow, I would. It's not a simple endeavor. You can't just slap a license on things. You have to be sure that you have the rights to every line of code. So we have to work through all sorts of issues -- legal, access, encumbrances, relationships with Java licensees," ... this is so very true. It's not just encumbrances, though that's a big deal, but there's a cultural shift that is going on here as well. The Java team has been working on Java for, oh, 13 years or so (11 years since it was made available publicly) in a more traditional product model. To shift to a collaborative community engaging model takes a very different mindset.
My interest, coming from the role I have in the team, is with the role the Quality Team plays in this picture. As the whole picture begins to unfold, as we bring more of this to the public, we can expect the quality team to have more presence. We're thinking about a range of possible projects from publishing metrics, to collaborating on test development and execution, to collaborating on test tools development, and more.
Posted by robogeek on August 15, 2006 at 15:42 PST | Permalink
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Open source project beginnings:
Posted by robogeek on August 09, 2006 at 11:58 PST | Permalink
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How many of your Windows apps use the native Windows UI?: Here's an interesting question: How many of your Windows apps use the native Windows UI? (dzone.com)... Prashant Devi asks that question, in a moment of realization that almost none of the applications he uses daily use the standard Windows UI.
To me this begs the question ... what value is the standard Windows UI if almost no application uses it?
The story has been, for years, that users are confused if different applications use different look and feel arrangements.
I used to argue this exact point in 1992ish .. at that time I was designing a cross-platform email client that was supposed to run on Windows, Mac, and if possible on System V. My team at that time was evaluating the then-available cross platform GUI toolkits .. some followed a policy of "must use the system provided GUI components", where others followed a policy of "we'll draw our own widgets" ..
This is kind of like the current SWT versus Swing argument .. except it was happening 15 years ago.
At the time I thought, hey, those poor users will be confused if every application is different. But today, hey, with the wide variety of skinnable applications and UI designs, if the users aren't confused by the current environment, then will they ever be confused? I don't think so.
However ... let's take this with a grain of salt, or rather some perspective.
There's the issue of metaphors and behavior styles. I don't know the official UI terminology .. but .. if you want a user to treat something like a button (e.g. know they can mouse over and click on it) then it oughta look something like a button. Ditto with the other basic components like lists or trees or whatnot. It's not that the component has to look rigidly like the platform designer thought it should look. But so long as it looks like what it's supposed to be, then the user will be able to work with it.
Think about what frequently happens on highly Designed web sites. The only way to navigate some of these sites is to mouse over every possible random widget and see what reacts to your mouse. Some of these sites give little or zero clues what are clickable and what isn't.
Modern GUI and website toolkits offer designers tremendous flexibility. Designers can potentially have a field day making beautiful looking applications .. you can certainly go way too far, making a brightly polished thingy with lots of sparkle and flash, but leaving the user completely clueless as to how to interact with the thing.
Posted by robogeek on August 03, 2006 at 07:01 PST | Permalink
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Useful quality metrics to publish?: "We" are having planning and discussion about how to handle Sun's Java implementation as open source. I've seen several articles and blog postings from the folk directly involved in the discussions, and it's all very interesting. What I'm most puzzling over is, what should the quality team do or publish etc in this environment?
In my past reading it was most enlightening to learn that one of the major advantages of an open source project is -- the public has more ability to gauge the quality of that project, than they can with the typical closed source project.
Now, in the book I was reading the distinction they were making is a typical closed source project where all you get is a binary, versus the typical open source where you compile it yourself or install prepackaged stuff from some repository off the net. Of course Java has always been in a middle area between those two extremes, making the source available, and more recently being more open with the source, accepting contributions, etc. But even so, there is a major mindshift difference happening in the Java team as part of moving to an open source project.
In my case I'm leading the discussions in the quality team to plan what the quality team ought to do as part of the open source Java project. One issue is there are few examples, because in the majority of open source projects there is not a dedicated quality team, and instead either there's no formalized testing or else the developers follow a test driven development process and think they don't need formalized testing beyond their unit tests.
With the few examples available to us of an open source project with a dedicated testing team ... let me ask you, our public, your opinion. I am making zero commitment to do anything you say, but I do value your input and advice.
What information / metrics / reports / plans / tests / etc would you find helpful to see to help you gauge the quality of Sun's Java implementation?
Thank you.
Posted by robogeek on July 30, 2006 at 11:56 PST | Permalink
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Java DB in the JDK, and SQL in desktop applications: There was a little "discussion" about the inclusion of Java DB into the JDK. I was on vacation and didn't read it too deeply.
At least a) it's only in the JDK, and it's the JRE download size that's more of an issue than is the JDK download size ... b) it's not in rt.jar but instead a separate directory in the JDK ...
What struck me, though, is the idea that a database is only suitable for server side applications. And that a database is only suitable for Java EE usage. Well...
Generally I think that's a very limited viewpoint. A database is a general data storage system, and it's suitable to a wide array of applications.
For example .. an email client (e.g. Columba) might want to include a full text search engine (e.g. Lucene). Lucene, for example, uses an SQL database to store its indexing. Hence, Columba, if it used Lucene, would need an SQL database. The general form of that use case is .. any application that deals with a large set of text files might well want to store full text indexing of those text files.
There's many other kinds of applications where a database might be a good idea. For example iPhoto doesn't necessarily require a database, but one could be useful. An MP3 player might store its association of playlists to songs using a database.
What triggered writing this posting is the announcement here: Meta Tracker is a powerful desktop-neutral first class object database, tag/metadata database, search tool and indexer.
Posted by robogeek on July 18, 2006 at 13:27 PST | Permalink
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COBOL isn't dead, it just smells funny: I was thinking the other day - what with the Visual Basic compiler for Java, it would make sense for there to be a COBOL compiler for Java. That way we could draw on yet another large body of software to run on top of the Java runtime.
Okay, so I get strange thoughts occasionally.
Posted by robogeek on June 18, 2006 at 19:42 PST | Permalink
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Open source project maintanence:
Posted by robogeek on June 14, 2006 at 15:12 PST | Permalink
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Installing the JRE on Ubuntu, with alternatives support:
Posted by robogeek on June 04, 2006 at 09:06 PST | Permalink
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You can fix the JDK today:
Posted by robogeek on May 20, 2006 at 09:01 PST | Permalink
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Quick test of Resin's PHP support -- using Drupal: I have some web sites that I publish for myself. There's some history to this, but last year I chose the Drupal content management system. It has a great featureset and a large community surrounding it. It is written using PHP and works pretty well.
So... Caucho (the makers of Resin) recently came out with PHP support, and I just ran it through a quick test. Caucho provides a couple tiny examples that show, yup, trivial PHP scripts run. But I wondered whether it would run a serious PHP application, like Drupal.
It works. I made a copy of the PHP for one of my sites, configured the site/default/settings.inc to point to the database for that site, and fired up resin. After a couple issues, I was pleasantly surprised to see it working really well.
... read on for further analysis ..
Posted by robogeek on May 19, 2006 at 13:08 PST | Permalink
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Distributing Sun's Java to Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Open Solaris, ..and, "it's a matter of 'how'":
Posted by robogeek on May 16, 2006 at 12:00 PST | Permalink
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Syntactic sugar and hybrid dynamic languages: I just listened to Software Engineering Radio Episode 14: Interview Ted Neward and boy that's got a lot of interesting food for thought.
Posted by robogeek on May 12, 2006 at 18:53 PST | Permalink
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Dynamic language in Java or otherwise, specifically Groovy and Grails: The Java Posse gang just posted Interview with Graeme Rocher of Grails which serves as a great introduction and/or overview of both Groovy and Grails (a.k.a. Groovy on Rails). I've used Groovy just a teensy bit, so I won't go into the language at all. If you want to look further, there is groovy and grails home pages chock full of information.
What I want to do is contrast the state of different dynamic languages.
Posted by robogeek on April 30, 2006 at 19:57 PST | Permalink
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Tutorial on implementing a scripting language on top of Java: Build your own scripting language for Java covers a topic I had wanted to research and write. Fortunately someone else took up the cause.
At issue is the question of using the JSR 223 features, in Mustang as the javax.script package, to implement a scripting language on top of Java.
I've written about this earlier, but I see this as potentially a very good strategic move. Any language author of a scripting language has a choice of "how do I implement the interpreter?". Typically a language author has to both design their language as well as the underlying interpreter engine. But, I think the required skills are very different. To be a good language designer, and to be a good interpreter implementer, are very different tasks.
With JSR 223 a language designer can now concentrate on the language design. They can rely on the Java VM to provide the execution engine.
Plus, their user community doesn't have to reinvent the whole world ... instead they can reuse the vast library of available Java classes.
In the Java World article I've linked to, the author takes you through the design of a simplistic language and the implementation of two ways to execute that language within Java.
Posted by robogeek on April 28, 2006 at 19:23 PST | Permalink
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The winners of the Mustang Regressions Challenge have been posted: We are pleased to announce the winners of the Mustang Regressions Challenge. From January 30 through March 31, 2006, we sponsored a challenge asking the public to test Java 6 (a.k.a. Mustang) and tell us about any regression bugs that were found. The specifics can be found further down this page. There are five winners in this contest, each of which are receiving an Ultra 20 workstation.
During the course of the contest we received over 130 submissions, of which 72 passed the screening process and were entered as regression bugs. We wish to thank everybody who participated. The contest gave us some very valuable information and feedback to use in improving Java quality.
After careful consideration a team of our senior staff selected the following entries as the winners in this contest. The criteria we used included the clarity of the bug report and the impact of the bug.
For more information go to the contest home page.
Posted by robogeek on April 26, 2006 at 15:33 PST | Permalink
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Garbage collecting your life:
Posted by robogeek on April 14, 2006 at 06:56 PST | Permalink
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Mustang regression contest is now over:
Posted by robogeek on April 01, 2006 at 20:33 PST | Permalink
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Regression contest almost over:
Posted by robogeek on March 30, 2006 at 20:19 PST | Permalink
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Scripting language support and whether Java needs to be open sourced:
Posted by robogeek on March 30, 2006 at 06:25 PST | Permalink
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Re: "Sun appears commited to fixing any/all regressions prior to release": There was an interesting discussion thread on javalobby last week: Poll: Delay Mustang in favor of more fixes? ... I think the discussion added a lot of value to the discussion around Java and especially the in-progress Mustang release.
I wanted to focus on one statement that really stands out to me as the project leader for the Mustang Regression contest: "Sun appears commited to fixing any/all regressions prior to release". That's exactly the idea we wanted to reinforce with the public.
Posted by robogeek on March 25, 2006 at 10:54 PST | Permalink
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Mustang Regression Challenge -- winding down: Just a quick note - the Mustang Regression Challenge is winding down. The deadline for entry is March 31, 2006 at midnight. So far we have received 44 entries, some of which have already resulted in fixes being made. The more regressions you find, the more issues we will have fixed before Mustang is finalized, and the better Mustang will be in the end. Well, that's the theory anyway.
Posted by robogeek on March 15, 2006 at 11:24 PST | Permalink
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In writing software, whose job should be simplified?:
Posted by robogeek on March 04, 2006 at 15:01 PST | Permalink
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Will Java outlive PHP ??:
Posted by robogeek on March 03, 2006 at 09:22 PST | Permalink
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Scripting languages and Java:
Posted by robogeek on February 28, 2006 at 09:19 PST | Permalink
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Bendy classes and dynamic programming: Jack Herrington has published this article: Going dynamic with PHP claiming to show some things PHP can do which Java can't.
Okaaaay... This is another of the articles in the meme that dynamic languages are great, and rigid languages are uncomfortable. I don't know if I got the analogy right this time, let me know please?
The problem he poses is about implementing the database interface classes. The traditional method might be to write one class per database table, expose get/set methods for each field, etc. You'd end up with a tedious implementation and a lot of typing of highly similar code. He poses three possible solutions, and claims that PHP implements the best of the three.
One problem with the article is there's more than three possible solutions. The problem with the proposed solution is it doesn't give early warning of broken code, leading to greater expense to fix coding problems.
Whever a writer presents a problem .. and then presents a selected list of solutions .. the writer (maybe unknowingly) is trying to limit the readers thinking to the given solution set. But what if there are other solutions the author doesn't present?
...
Posted by robogeek on February 22, 2006 at 21:24 PST | Permalink
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Regression contest prizes: Three weeks ago I launched the Mustang Regression Contest. The grand prizes are five Ultra 20 workstations, which are to be awarded for the "best" regressions submitted during the contest. The other day Ray Gans and I brought them from the a storeroom in the Menlo Park campus to one in the Santa Clara campus. So while moving them I thought to post a picture to show you guys what you're competing for.
Posted by robogeek on February 21, 2006 at 12:37 PST | Permalink
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Roundup of desktop java improvements in Mustang:
Posted by robogeek on February 19, 2006 at 09:29 PST | Permalink
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Some nice comments on Mustang compatibility:
Posted by robogeek on February 18, 2006 at 08:43 PST | Permalink
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Mustang has gone Beta:
Posted by robogeek on February 15, 2006 at 08:49 PST | Permalink
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An easy way to enter the Mustang Regression contest: Let me give you guys an interesting hint on entering the regression contest ... Suppose your application has a unit-test suite ... Simply run your test suite on a Tiger build (1.5 update 6 is the latest) and then on a Mustang build (JDK 6 build 70 is the latest) and compare the results.
If every test gives the same result on each then that's wonderful. But if some test gives a different result on Mustang than on Tiger, it's time to roll up your sleeves. Does it show a bug in your application? Or does it show a bug in Java?
If you're satisfied it shows a bug in Java, you've probably found a regression. Again, regressions occur when functionality which used to work in a previous release is broken in a later release. WE WANT TO KNOW ABOUT REGRESSIONS, because we want to fix them before making the final Mustang release.
There's more information about the contest here including a link to tne entry page.
Posted by robogeek on February 09, 2006 at 16:31 PST | Permalink
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Is Java 10 yrs old, or 15 yrs old?: A little about java history and... the Mustang Regressions Contest.
Posted by robogeek on February 07, 2006 at 14:11 PST | Permalink
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The Mustang Regression Contest, and international law: A question that's come up around the Regressions Contest is:- Why are various countries restricted from participating?
This has to do with laws and lawyers. No doubt you'll have seen this in other contests, especially if you've read the fine print. The phrase is: "void where prohibited by law" ...
In designing this contest we went through an interesting and probably excruciating exercise. We got some lawyers to research for us a set of contest rules that were as compatible with as many countries as possible. That turns out to be very difficult because the law governing contests varies so much from country to country, in incompatible ways. The lawyers did the best they could, but there's only so much one can do to harmonize conflicting laws.
Contest home page
Official Contest rules
Posted by robogeek on February 06, 2006 at 17:35 PST | Permalink
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Announcing the Mustang regressions challenge: We are challenging you, the Java developer community, to find
functional regressions between J2SE 5.0 (Tiger) and Java SE 6
(Mustang). The contest runs from Jan 31 through March 31,
2006, with prizes to be awarded in mid-April. You will find
details on the contest
home page
and FAQ.
The complete entry requirements are in the official
legal rules
governing the contest. You can enter the contest using the contest
entry form.
Posted by robogeek on January 30, 2006 at 23:03 PST | Permalink
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Mustang Beta approaching - we want to know about your bugs and regressions:
Posted by robogeek on January 25, 2006 at 08:43 PST | Permalink
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A useful testing technique to find deadlocks related to invokeAndWait:
Posted by robogeek on January 19, 2006 at 20:51 PST | Permalink
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Developer scenario testing:
Posted by robogeek on January 19, 2006 at 20:14 PST | Permalink
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The non-public classes in Sun's Java implementation:
Posted by robogeek on January 14, 2006 at 20:24 PST | Permalink
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Re: Why Sun never make Java on FreeBSD:
Posted by robogeek on January 09, 2006 at 19:56 PST | Permalink
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Automated visual verification is hard:
Posted by robogeek on December 21, 2005 at 16:47 PST | Permalink
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Safety is freedom?: Different strokes for different folks.
Posted by robogeek on December 21, 2005 at 15:50 PST | Permalink
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Bangalore (the city) changing its name? ...now Bengaluru:
Posted by robogeek on December 14, 2005 at 11:17 PST | Permalink
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What time is it?:
Posted by robogeek on December 05, 2005 at 15:17 PST | Permalink
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The quality team's test execution load and scheduling: The other day I wrote about a patent some of us in the quality team received over a test execution scheduling tool we developed. While the patent and the software is interesting, the thing that's really interesting is what that software enables us to do.
Which is ... because of DTF we are able to schedule execution of a tremendous amount of testing on a wide set of platform combinations. Without DTF we would get lost with the test execution schedule the java quality team faces. I thought it would be good to outline just what that is.
Posted by robogeek on November 30, 2005 at 19:09 PST | Permalink
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A patent for the Java Quality organization: Huh? I got a patent? Say what?
Posted by robogeek on November 28, 2005 at 21:46 PST | Permalink
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The Java quality team in Bangalore:
Posted by robogeek on November 20, 2005 at 04:33 PST | Permalink
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More on Bangalore:
Posted by robogeek on November 19, 2005 at 22:23 PST | Permalink
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Some practical usage to findbugs:
Posted by robogeek on November 14, 2005 at 03:52 PST | Permalink
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Visiting the Quality team in Bangalore:
Posted by robogeek on November 11, 2005 at 03:25 PST | Permalink
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Followup to my experiment in community process: A couple weeks ago I did a little experiment in community processes. Supposedly community driven processes are better quality because there's more eyeballs. That's an interesting claim, and I wanted to test it.
The Register has an article along the same lines as my test: Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems
Posted by robogeek on October 18, 2005 at 16:42 PST | Permalink
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JRE / Google toolbar now live on java.com:
Posted by robogeek on October 13, 2005 at 17:28 PST | Permalink
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Blog Bridge and performant Swing applications: Blogbridge, if you don't know about the application, is a really good RSS/newsfeed aggregator that runs on your desktop. Unlike webservice style aggregators, you have a real GUI with some nice and interesting features. As a Java app it will run on any platform having Java ... I'm running it on my Titanium 1ghz Powerbook w/ OS X 10.3.9. My system is still on Java 1.4.x since Apple hasn't yet released 1.5.x officially.
I first started with blogbridge before v1.0 (which was only a few months ago).
At the time there were many severe problems. GUI interactions were very slow, GUI repaints would often leave empty greyness, DnD operations were a pain, etc. But the UI design showed a lot of promise, and it did greatly improve my morning news-reading ritual. So I stuck it out, and now I'm glad I did.
Over that time Apple has issued a few security or bug-fix updates to Java, but as I said has not made a major JDK version number change. This means that every improvement I see in blogbridge comes from the efforts of the blogbridge team, and not due to improvements in the underlying Java.
Posted by robogeek on October 13, 2005 at 16:20 PST | Permalink
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An experiment in community process:
Posted by robogeek on October 09, 2005 at 21:40 PST | Permalink
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Test tool collaboration:
Posted by robogeek on October 05, 2005 at 11:34 PST | Permalink
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Building JDK 6.0 on Windows:
Posted by robogeek on September 16, 2005 at 21:24 PST | Permalink
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Tools to fit the work, and what's in a look and feel?:
Posted by robogeek on September 16, 2005 at 15:17 PST | Permalink
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The rise of corporate transparency:
Posted by robogeek on September 12, 2005 at 10:43 PST | Permalink
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Re: test framework comparison:
Posted by robogeek on September 08, 2005 at 10:32 PST | Permalink
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A cool HTML editor applet:
Posted by robogeek on September 05, 2005 at 10:37 PST | Permalink
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Latest Swing Sightings is out: Swing Sightings is a showcase for good quality Swing applications. The latest issue is no exception, having a slew of great looking and useful applications.
Posted by robogeek on August 23, 2005 at 14:02 PST | Permalink
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More looking at open source quality processes:
Posted by robogeek on August 16, 2005 at 21:31 PST | Permalink
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Open source quality organizations:
Posted by robogeek on August 12, 2005 at 17:28 PST | Permalink
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Looking at 'findbugs':
Posted by robogeek on August 06, 2005 at 10:28 PST | Permalink
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On supporting IE 7 in (Sun's) Java:
Posted by robogeek on August 04, 2005 at 11:44 PST | Permalink
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MVM from a quality viewpoint:
Posted by robogeek on July 25, 2005 at 07:58 PST | Permalink
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Accessibility for test automation:
Posted by robogeek on July 19, 2005 at 11:08 PST | Permalink
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Java testing and "test first development":
Posted by robogeek on July 13, 2005 at 16:24 PST | Permalink
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Greetings, introducing myself:
Posted by robogeek on July 08, 2005 at 09:47 PST | Permalink
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