Rob's Java Blog (and other things)

Google Test (Google's C++ Unit Testing Framework) is now open source!

2008-07-09T10:20:00.000-07:00

If you like writing tests in C++ and haven't found the right unit test framework yet, then you should check out the Google Testing Blog article on Google Test.

It's Google's xUnit style test framework available under an open source license. Give it a spin, you can use it to test your new protocol buffer code that's written using the Google C++ Style Guide.

Videos posted from Eclipse Day at the Googleplex

2008-07-09T10:13:00.000-07:00

Videos posted from Eclipse Day at the Googleplex
By Robert Konigsberg, Software Engineer and Eclipse Enthusiast

Here's a short follow-up to our recent post about Eclipse Day at the Googleplex: All the talks from the larger presentation room are now available for your viewing pleasure:

Introduction & Keynote: Eclipse at Ebay by Michael Galpin, with introduction by Ian Skerrett,
How Mylyn Changes the Way I Develop by Bjorn Freeman-Benson
Tools Make the Difference: GWT in Eclipse by Bruce Johnson
Plug-in Development Tips and Tricks by Chris Aniszczyk
Wiring Hacker Synapses: Collaborative Coding and Team Tooling in Eclipse by Scott Lewis & Mustafa K. Isik

These, and other interesting talks can be found on the Google Tech Talks channel on YouTube.

To Ellipses or not?

2008-07-02T10:37:00.000-07:00

I just noticed an interesting discussion on the eclipse ui-best-practices-working-group list about a recent change in Eclipse to rename Preferences... to Preferences and the bug asking to rename it back.

I admit that in general, I'm usually one to follow Microsoft's lead for UI standards however I think in this case, and probably going forward, I'd be more inclined to follow the Apple or Windows XP style guide instead of the Vista guidelines. I've only briefly tried Vista before dropping the VM and switching back to XP and didn't really see anything impressive from the UI in it.

I too am in favor of using ellipses in menu items when a dialog is invoked vs. a command being executed.

Microsoft to help enable Java on Windows...

2008-03-19T13:19:00.000-07:00

From http://port25.technet.com/archive/2008/03/19/supernova.aspx

What a great dig at Sun. Microsoft to help make SWT better on Vista...

Open Source Developers @ Google Speaker Series: Michael Still

2007-08-15T16:13:00.000-07:00

I just heard from Leslie Hawthorn in the Open Source Team here at the Google Mountain View Campus that there's going to be a talk that's open to the public this Thursday (August 16th).

Here's the link with information about it:
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2007/08/open-source-developers-google-speaker.html

I attended Bob Lee's Guice talk shortly before coming to Google (no relation), and thought it was way cool. So come hear about MythTV and eat some free food.

- Rob

Generated Code slightly better with unit tests.

2007-03-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

I've never been a fan of generated code. Quite frankly, I would rather type it myself so that I understand what's happening than trust a tool, that is arguably more reliable at creating error free code than myself, to spit out something for me to code against.

Laziness however, is a very important motivator for trying new things. :-) The hesitation at coding against generate code has been overcome in this case by the ease of generation, and also writing several unit tests against the generated API's.

The case in point is I decided to use Oracle's JAXB2 generate support to generate the Java Bean to code against for an XML Schema that I wrote for an in house tool I'm working on. The schema is relatively simple, it contains a set of properties and other random bits of information needed to kick off a process on an iAS server.

Although I know hat the generated Java code will function just fine going from bean to XML document, and back to bean, the Unit test serves as an excellent way for me to tell if a future regeneration of the XML schema will break any of my API's that I'm using to code against the bean. This little tiny bit of security was all I needed, coupled with the fact that it's bloody simple to generate the java class from a XML schema, to finally give in and try a small bit of generated code.

Also, before anyone (read: Alex or Brian) else says it, All code is [more than] slightly better with Unit Tests.

Moving is always such a pain....

2007-03-05T13:28:00.000-08:00

Hosting your own email and other services is a pain. I thought it would be heaps of fun to manage everything myself. I had high aspirations for using wonderful new bits of technology that we are working on at Oracle right now. Then, reality set in. I realized that I didn't have the unlimited free time that I used to, I realized that I can't always bounce my server remotely (it would like to die the moment I left town), then I realized....

Let's just outsource it.

So...

Mail => Google Applications (http://www.google.com/a)
Blog => Blogger (also Google)
Old Static content => Good friend Brian Duff's graciously agreed to help me out with some disk space.

The best part of this is my computer room at home will finally be quiet for a change.

Maybe I'll even find time to blog more frequently now that the sysadmin hat is off.

- Rob