Should you consider prototyping in your plans? And what about the prototypes themselves? Read more …
Recently I've been asked about how a developer PC should be setup these days that I decided to document this in a blog entry. Read more …
GNUmake doesn't have a feature to convert Strings to uppercase. But hey, UNIX world is all easy. Just use a good shell, like bash :) Read more …
Moore's Law has changed. It is still valid, but it's implemented differently. The MHz-race
has been superseded by a race for cores. Read more …
I've just discovered this new approach of collecting and documenting agile antipatterns. Read more …
A while ago at work, I've had a discussion with colleagues about a lint-Issue. There was a lint-warning that the developers didn't understood. The suggestions was to use an assertion, which is a good idea. Read more …
Commit Often, Commit Early! This is a rule of thumb for using revision control systems that cannot be quoted frequently enough. Read more …
If you're a software craftsman, can you touch type? No? But you should. Oh, and by the way, touch typing on Windows sucks. Read more …
In a Windows environment, the default scripting seems to be cmd.exe batch files. But batch files are evil, see why - and what can be done against it. Read more …
I've stumbled over this when I was writing about logging. How would someone show stderr on the screen and stderr + stdout in a log file? Read more …
What's wrong about hiring a student to get an urgent job done? Nothing - at least for the student. Read more …
Recently I thought about extensions to our build system which would require to use networking. While network programming in languages like Java already is easy and trivial, I still seek a way that is even more light weight. And finally I found it: bash can do network programming. Read more …
I've just started a new tiny project, creating a de.riedquat.smartcardio library. The purpose is to have a library as simple and generic as javax.smartcardio but with fewer constraints so that testing smartcards becomes possible. Read more …
I hate GUIs. Here's why. Read more …
I've just managed to setup javax.smartcardio on Kubuntu Linux. Here is what to do. Read more …
I invested some time in finding bugs in Java 7. It paid off. I got a T-Shirt. And I just discovered myself on the Java SE 7 Honor Roll. Read more …
Do you need performance reviews? Incentives? An IRC-friend has pointed me to some very interesting insights. Read more …
The skill is one of the things that makes up a good developer. Or let's rather call it software craftsman. Are you a skilled software craftsman? Read more …
Rob Pike and Tim O'Reilly suggeste to make 2011-10-30 Dennis Ritchie Day. Yes, let's do that. Read more …
I've just discovered that Dave Ragget from the W3C has already developed competition to XSlides: Slidy2. Read more …
After Mr. Byte finally understood that a byte value can be represented by a pair of hex digits, he faced the next problem. Read more …
This is just my personal documentation of my KDE settings. Read more …
While I learn Android programming, I detect some rules which I think might also be helpful for others. Therefore I publish them here. This list will grow over time. Read more …
All the recent buzz about Scrum has actually let many people forget about Extreme Programming. This imo is not a good trend. Read more …
I use IntelliJ IDEA on several different machines. The default settings are a bit flawed, so I decided to track my settings changes. This way I can quickly configure fresh installs. Read more …
The heise initiative of having two clicks instead of one for Twitter, Facebook etc is good and inspiring. It respects your privacy - data is no longer transferred to twitter or facebook by merely looking at a web page. However, I think it is too heavy-weight - at least to me. So I decided to create my own. Read more …
Sometimes, gimp or Photoshop is just not practical. Especially, when the image processing tasks are dumb and repetetive. Read more …
I've just published information about my first Android App: LAN Pinger. Read more …
Android is very very cool, but like all software it has a few bugs. Read more …
This is just a rant about the incompetence of some German journalists. When will they learn that HTML is not a programming language?! Read more …
Why is it necessary for Apple to sue Samsung? Quite simple. The Galaxy Tab is far superior to the iPad. And because of that, the frutarian wimps at Apple are scared of Samsung. Read more …
In Germany Apple filed a lawsuit against Samsung because of Gebrauchsmusterschutzverletzung
. Read more …
This is my personal Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwahl config list. Here I list everything which I configure deviating from a vanilla installation. Read more …
I've found quite a lot of bugs in Kubuntu. Now let's try to hunt them down in a systematic way. This is my setup. Read more …
The following code demonstrates how to use the Perl fileno function to check if a file handle is open. Read more …
String comparison in cmd.exe is easy, isn't it? It is, but the obvious way is wrong. Read more …
Situation: A DOS batch is called with arguments and these arguments shall be passed to a Cygwin command. Read more …
It's funny but simple logic that god hates Paix Liturgique. I don't like them either. Read more …
The number troubles that I have with Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal keeps growing and growing. So I decided to organize them. This is my personal Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal trouble index. Over the time, this index might grow or change, and many trouble items might get their own blog entries. Read more …
Playgrounding is a working method for learning, experimenting, solution finding and building up a personal knowledge base. Read more …
As a software architect and consultant, I've seen several companies and projects in my life. Some of these projects are more, some of them are less successful. Read more …
Quite often, Makefiles are not very well documented. The biggest problem is that often, users don't know which goals and variables are supported by a Makefile. Read more …
Approxion is a blog of a friend of mine Here's a list of my favorite Approxion blog entries. Read more …
The (as of this writing) latest update of the Adobe Flash Player Plugin on Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal obviously breaks the installation. Here's how to fix it. Read more …
In Kubuntu 11.04, the combination of the proprietary AMD / ATI graphics driver and KRandR seems broken. It took me a while to find a workaround, and here it is. Read more …
A few days after Mr. Byte got the description of of the Motorola S-Record file format, he came back to Master Bar. Read more …
Read this story if you want to find out where Mr. Byte got his name from while he was working for Master Bar. Read more …
When I first used Kubuntu (09.04), I was overwhelmed about how easy and reliable it works. Now, with Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, I'm extremely disappointed and switch to another distribution, probably LFS. Read more …
This is the introduction of the fictonal characters Master Bar and Mr. Byte. Read more …
I haven't used ↗GitHub much, but there are a few reasons why I immediatly prefer it over ↗SourceForge. Read more …
This is just a summary of a possible setup of Linux on a SSD. Read more …
A friend regularly forwards me a newsletter from "tecchannel.de". In the latest newsletter there was a hint about how to change settings in Windows so that a network adapter works on Linux. Read more …
This time I'm blogging a performance experience. Read more …
A while ago I decided to change from SuSE Linux to Kubuntu for new installations. Now I regret my decision a bit and think about looking for the next distro. Read more …
One of my current home projects is building Mini-PCs. This is surprisingly easy these days. Read more …
One of my current home projects is building a PC-based box as Router / Firewall / Server / Access Point. This is how I planned it. Read more …
Should the primary interface of a Version Control System be the GUI or the Command Line? (If you cannot stand a strong opinion about this topic, you should leave this page... you have been warned.) Read more …
Fake or not - for all TRON fans, this is good! Read more …
I've just found another JDK7 bug. This time it's about flush() in try-with-resources. Read more …
I've found this very interesting blog entry about units in Java. ↗Java. Units done right(!?). Read more …
I've done my first steps on Github. I'm impressed, but let's see if I miss something. Read more …
In his book ↗Outliers
, Malcolm Gladwell repeatedly mentions the 10,000-Hour Rule. What does it mean to me? Read more …
I prefer Linux over Windows. Here's why. Read more …
Github or Sourceforge - which should I choose? Read more …
After my blog entry about the Liskov substitition principle (LSP), I've been asked what the hack making a class final has to do with the LSP. It was final fields / immutability -> LSP -> final class. I admit the thoughts were running a bit quickly, so here's a more detailled explanation. Read more …
What's the best cinema in Munich? I think I know it by now. Read more …
Although very important, the Liskov substitution principle is not very popular. Let's increase its popularity by simply writing about it. Read more …
Sometimes there are variables which a Makefile expects to be set from outside. This is how I deal with them. Read more …
I've just discovered a bug in the javac about try-with-resources when I tried to use a simple expression as resource. Read more …
I've just tried the ↗new validator for (X)HTML5. It reports 4 errors for my meta elements. WTF? Read more …
I've read a few movie critiques that criticize the story of Tron: Legacy. However, I've only ever read blanket criticism, not facts. Read more …
At the end of Tron: Legacy, Kevin Flynn and C.L.U. 2 annihilate themselves in a huge explosion. This explosion seems to destroy the Tron World, leaving nothing intact but the Sea of Simulation. Read more …
Often, discussions amongst technical folks are shrugged off as holy war and ignored, by management as well as by other technical folks. This shouldn't be done. Holy wars should be taken seriously. Read more …
Choosing the build tool is crucial to projects. Just taking the next build tool available won't do. Read more …
In a lot of projects, I use GNUMake. Here are a few tricks which I regularly use in them. Read more …
My blog article about JDK7 usage: switch on String inspired me to investigate in alternatives to switch on String. During that investigation I've noticed that there's a potential pitfall regarding null for switch on enums. Read more …
Project Coin introduced a new feature to the Java programming language: Switch on String. Read more …
Inspired by ↗The Three Most Important Tools of a Software Developer from Ralf Holly, I wanted to describe my personal view on the most important tools for developers. I really like Ralf's list. I share his opinion that these three things, the keyboard, the editor, and the scripting language, are of utter importance, and spread word about these myself. Read more …
I just found a good reference about the new language features. Finally I needn't get a full picture of the language updates by putting the masses of tiny bits together myself. Read more …
JDK7 extends the syntax of catch statements to allow catching multiple exception types with a single catch clause. This is really useful. There are many occasions where distinct exception types require the same exception handling. Read more …
When using the new try-with-resources feature, I've just discovered a bug in the behaviour of javac option -Xlint:try. Read more …
Recently, I stumbled over a twitter message over a decision whether to use 1TBS or K&R. Uhm - where's the difference? Read more …
Experimenting with the new try-with-resources feature, I found out that it could be improved. Read more …
There is a typical pattern about freeing resources which becomes simpler in JDK7. Read more …
I've just played around with JDK7 concept WatchService. Read more …
I've just played around with JDK7 method Files.walkFileTree(). Read more …
The package java.util of JDK 7 has some new additions. Let's have a look at them. Read more …
One of the new features of the JDK 7 is the package java.nio.file. Great package, but I found a few things are missing. Read more …
Kritik: Der "Focus" ist ein deutschsprachiges Wochenmagazin aus dem Burda-Konzern. Die Ausgabe Nr. 52/10 vom 27. Dezember 2010 titelte "Ja, ich schaffe das! So funktioniert Selbstmotivation". Aufmacher interessant, Resultat enttäuschend. Read more …
The ↗Love Parade will not celebrate its 20th anniversary - sad, but a good decision. Read more …
Small changesets are good, large changesets are evil. It's (nearly) as simple as that. Read more …
On the Mobile World Congress, Rob Conway, head of the GSM Association, announced that until 2012, the majority of mobile phones will support a standardized power supply based on Mini-USB. Read more …
German telecom provider E-Plus has announced that they shut down their i-mode services on 2008-04-01. Read more …
"Representing Explicit Attributes in UML" is an article about how to represent explicit attributes (e.g. Java annotations) in UML - and a lesson why you shouldn't believe everything, even if it is published by guys working at a university. Read more …
At the end of last week, I've attended a half day workshop / demonstration of AgitarOne, a tool that automatically generates unit tests for existing code. Though this was very very interesting, the workshop left me with mixed feelings. Read more …
As you've probably already heard, SUN recently open sourced Java. This is a very interesting, dangerous but required step, and the only logical option for a bright future of Java. Read more …
I've just started publishing my own book reviews. Read more …
Andreas Kirschbaum, an open source developer, found a bug in the Java Language Specification. The bug is related to the description of definite assignment in the context of for-loops in the JLS. Read more …
CherBot, Cher's information bot for Daimonin, now is a SourceForge project. Read more …
CherBot, Cher's information bot for Daimonin, will finally become open source. The decision whether to open source CherBot was not easy. After nearly two years of discussions of the pros and cons with the ↗Daimonin and ↗CherBot teams, we finally found a way to release CherBot. Read more …
You can find additional BLOG information that's mainly related to Daimonin / Gridarta in the ↗Daimonin Forum, Announcements, Programmer Blog, Cher's BLOG.