Eamonn McManus' Weblog http://www.artima.com/weblogs/index.jsp?blogger=dichotomy Artima Weblogs is a community of bloggers posting on a wide range of topics of interest to software developers. Artima.com http://www.artima.com/images/artima88x33.gif http://www.artima.com/ AccessibleObject revisited: a study in immutability http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=164042 Looking at the Java Reflection API, we can learn some lessons about immutability. Java API Design Guidelines http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=142428 There are tons of books and articles about how to design and write good Java code, but surprisingly little about the specific topic of API design. Here's a summary of what I've learnt on the subject from various sources and my own experience. Negatable Marker Annotations http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=98061 The Java language has always had the notion of marker interfaces. A problem with these is that if a parent class has the marker, all its children inevitably do too. On the other hand, marker annotations don't necessarily have this limitation. Here's how to define a marker that can be cancelled in a subclass. JavaPolis 2004 Trip Report http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=85553 JavaPolis is great! Lots of interesting people, lots of interesting sessions. Here are my experiences, with a summary of most of the sessions I attended. JavaPolis 2004 http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=81702 The JavaPolis 2004 conference takes place in Antwerp, Belgium, the week of the 13th to the 17th of December. An excellent selection of speakers (plus your humble scribe) at a very affordable price. Java Generics: Don't Repeat Yourself http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=79394 A minor annoyance with Java generics is that you often end up repeating type parameters in a variable declaration and in the constructor invocation that initializes that variable. Defining a trivial static method allows you to avoid this. It's not enough to say what it does http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=61979 All too often, developers think that documenting their new creations just means writing a detailed technical description of what it does. In a sense, they're explaining things to themselves. But what you really need to do is explain things to someone who's coming across your stuff for the first time.