Articles, notes and random thoughts on Software Development and Technology
JRuby 0.9.1 has been released – JRuby offers a 100% Java implementation of the Ruby language supported on the Java VM, which brings all the benefits of the dynamic language to the Java platform. This release improves performance, and also improves support for running the Ruby on Rails framework and applications on the Java VM.
For more info on JRuby, see the project site here.
The majority of Solution Providers are still waiting for Java EE 5 support from the major vendors before starting to consider implementing new systems with EE 5 features. This article on InfoQ.com provides a good summary of where the major players currently are in terms of their announced support for EE 5 compliance. Noticibly falling behind is IBM which apparently will not have EE 5 support in Websphere until 2008.
Howard Lovatt has a good summary of the various proposed approaches to include the ability to support closures in Java, including his own proposal as well.
Closures are supported in many other languages like Ruby, Python, Lisp and Perl, and allow the developer to define a block of code and refer to that block of code with a reference. This allows the reference to the block to be passed as a parameter and to be applied to other code, for example to all matching items within a loop.
This book was mentioned on the JavaPosse’s podcast this week – it’s a collection of sample Java SE and EE type questions that are commonly used in interviews for developer positions, and would be useful for both interviewers and interviewess as a good source of information.
The site it is hosted on is also worth a look as it is an interesting concept – Lulu.com is a community publisher site. You can upload your own book content to be published on the site either for free or for sale, and the site offers it either for download or can print one off copies for people to purchase.