There is a lot of interest currently in the ability to extend a class (or something close to class extension) without requiring recompilation or source changes, Traits offer a viable method of achieving this.

Two Java 7 proposed extensions, extension methods and chained invocations, give extra meaning to method call syntax. Neither proposal has proved popular with bloggers and this blog suggests an alternative.

In this case, it's why I want a Ruby version of Drupal. There are some good reasons that apply in the general case...

Using software metrics for managing developers is usually frowned upon. That's too bad because they sure make software management fast and easy - as demonstrated in the video "Metrics-Based Software Management - A Hands On Approach".

Jeremy Meyer and I put this together from start to finish in one afternoon, using puppets to show the basics of making JRuby calls into Java.

Another milestone in Python 3000 development: alpha 2 is released. Now with immutable bytes!

This is a blog about Symbian: What it is, why you should care, and every little thing about how to play there as a developer. First, a confession. I love small systems programming. Crazy about it. Stunned that I actually get paid to do this. So there you have it. We all have our quirks, I suppose. Enough about me. Let’s talk Symbian.

The Google Open Source Office is outdoing itself with a new contest aimed at a younger generation of coders: students ages 13 or older.

How to create Flex forms within HTML pages to easily achieve cross-browser and cross-platform functionality.

Allowing static references to class members could greatly increase Java's type-safe expressive capability.

A shower song to remind me why it's useful to write down alternatives and reasoning.

Would you hire a programmer who insisted on working things out or using APIs solely from memory? If we expect people to be able to quickly research things on the web as part of the programming, why not include that in interviews? Is search efficiency a skill that should be on your resume?

Any software metric can be abused or misused, but does this mean we should avoid any and all software metrics? Joel Spolsky, Eric Sink, and I have an interesting, late night, conversation.

I have the demo version (first 7 chapters) of this up for anyone interested in trying it out.

Not only is this the first place that I look, it's a wonderful way to browse the language features and see what's new. It's also an excellent history of the language's development.