I was interviewing today at work. I remember when I first interviewed someone, not that long ago, I thought it was soo exciting, what responsibility. Then after the first one they are rather boring.It is interesting sitting on the other side of the table and asking the questions instead of being on the end of them. It's funny really but you...

I read this interesting article about API Design and reuse from Joshua Bloch being interviewed by Bill Venners.  The article is from 2002 but I think the points are still relevant today.   I have found that the Java developers I have worked with and including myself don't reuse much of their code.  The problem usually occurs...

I'm sure like me you have heard the term Agile Programming mentioned in many blogs. I will admit that were I work we don't really have any system we use. I also find that implementing all the rules of the various systems seems a bit too much like hard work. It seems to me like the new ideologies are based on best practices...

I have spent the whole day debugging, it makes value unit tests (junit) even more than usual. Debugging is such a difficult job when you can only test the code through the front end and checking the extra logging you have put in. The main problem I have with the code I was debugging was that it was using a struts action and almost all of the...

I have read about the book Ship it, it has been mentioned by quite a few blogs I have read.  Then the other day I stumbled upon one of the authors blog.  Anyway I thought I would see I would have a look for any of my favourite free sample chapters and like any book worth it?s salt it had a couple.  The book is about development...

Two months ago a developer left and then now he has found out he doesn't like it the new place and is now coming back. It's funny how even though you are doing basically the same job that working in one company can be so different to working in another company. When working with the developer in a small team of 3 it was a very different...

I'm currently in a bit of code debt. For those of you who don't know what code debt is, it is basically some smelly code and when you come to fix it, instead of refactoring it properly you instead slip in a dirty hack. This generates code debt because instead of fixing the problems you have squashed in a change which basically puts off...

I saw this entry on a forum a while ago and put it in my list of things to blog about in the future when if I haven't got any inspiration.  This was an entry about moonlighting (doing extra work after work)  and whether anyone knew the best way for a programmer to make some extra money in his spare time, here is the entry "Re:...

I have learnt this week, never assume anything when writing an application for a customer. It reminds me of a lecturer I used to have who said "never assume, it makes an ASS out of U and ME" A very witty comment and completely correct. Often when writing applications customers will only offer half solutions leaving a lot of the work for...

I find this site today, well I found it because it was one of the Java Series books that Sun promotes but this one had a website, which means I can see the goodies for free.   it is similar in some ways to Java Tips, which I have blogged about http://hoskinator.blogspot.com/2006/04/java-tips.html except that this site is purely just code...

A presentation about threads in Java.  It is quite a brief presentation of about 12 pages with 2 slides on each page but it is very clear and easy to read and understand.  I would probably recommend reading/downloading this slide if you have already about threads and want something to help you recap the main points in preparation...

When I was writing code under a very harsh deadline and there was smoke coming off the keyboard, I had left a few exceptions just being caught but without doing anything in them. This is a really bad state of affairs and it's certainly not something I am proud of. I have been going back through today and deciding what I should do in some of...

Although this is a small article, which is some of the time is a good thing.  The article won't help you learn how to use Abstract classes or interfaces but it does explain why they are useful, particularly why they are useful when used with Object orientated programming. It describes the way I view interfaces and abstract classes...

I find this interesting statistics and I have to admit I do like a completely unscientific fact to tell my mates. I have often wondered about the which search engine people use. I did also find another statistics about the top siteshttp://hoskinator.blogspot.com/2006/05/top-web-sites-in-april-2006-yah oo.html whcih Yahoo where top, microsoft and...

This page has 150 SCJP java questions.  I am not quite sure whether they are for Java 1.4 or 1.5/5 SCJP exam but questions are questions and questions are good practise.   The one critism is that the quesitons are spread out in 65 html pages and the question has the answer right below it so you sometimes see the answer before you have...