Articles, notes and random thoughts on Software Development and Technology
Groovy JSR-06 has been released, which is the final step before a Release Candidate release – in other words, we’re getting close to a final 1.0 release of the Groovy scripting language.
If you haven’t checked out this language yet I urge you to do so… for simple development related tasks where you just need to knock something together quickly, Groovy’s simplicity cannot be beaten.
Check here for a list of changes and additions in this latest release.
InfoQ.com has a round up of a number of articles asking the question ‘Is Java EE 5 lightweight enough?’
EE 5 has made a huge change to EE development with the use of ‘sensible defaults’ and annotations replacing much of the Deployment Descriptor Hell, but maybe the parties involved in the JCP process who defined the EE 5 spec did not go far enough. Richard Monson-Haefel, an analyst with the Burton Group and long time J2EE book author, comments in this article that there is a growing trend to take a ‘pick n mix’ approach to Java EE, where people are taking just the parts they need and enabling their use with other frameworks like Spring.
This is a good thing in my opinion, as firstly, no-where in the EE spec does it suggest you use every part of the EE spec – you choose the parts you need for solving your current problem. Spring goes an extra step to enabling this approach, as it enables the use of services previously only available and usable (easily) within an EE container, the application server, which depending on whether you prefer purchasing from a major vendor or using an open source solution, may cost you in the region of multiples of $10k.
The next threat to EE is the advent of alternative approaches to the EE monolithic approach, such as those spearheaded by Ruby on Rails and the many other frameworks introducing similar approaches. EE can only learn from the benefits being introduced by these frameworks. The article mentions an important point though – can EE adapt quick enough through the JCP process to offer these improvements that people are looking for, to keep people with the EE platform instead of moving elsewhere?
Sophos, an antivirus and security company, has a paper that summarizes the major trojans and viruses that were detected in the past six months this year.
The article has several sections covering malware, viruses and trojans, and after each section they state: “none is capable of infecting Mac OS X”.
Are they making the point that we’d all be better off if we just abandoned Windows, which is ridden with security holes and code flaws just begging for people to exploit and make life for the rest of us hell?
Microsoft have been trying to get into the portable music player business for some time now, since 2003 when they launched their Portal Media Center OS for handheld devices, and the ‘Plays for Sure’ initiative to guarantee compatibility between devices bearing this logo and Windows and WMA format files.
They have not made any significant dent in the market yet. iPod are still dominating, even though there is a whole range of other (non-Microsoft as well as Microsoft backed) devices out there to choose from, all shapes and sizes, some with flash memory, some taking flash cards, and some with integral harddrives.
This article on RegHardware suggests Microsoft’s next attempt may be to launch a portable game console to compete with Nintendo and Sony that may also play movies and music.