Playing On The Google Playground

I have decided to play around with Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and Google AppEngine.  Both look very interesting , very promising, and very fun.  I don’t know very much about them, so this should be an interesting experience and I am sure to learn a ton of new technologies along the way.

My first app is just going to be a Task list.  There are a plethora of Task Lists out there, but I think it will be fun and a good place to start.  I’ve already created my site, The Super List, so feel free to watch the progress (if any)!

Java Is Pass By Value

This is something that threw me off when I first encountered it; I should have read the tutorial.

“Primitive arguments, such as an int or a double, are passed into methods by value. This means that any changes to the values of the parameters exist only within the scope of the method. When the method returns, the parameters are gone and any changes to them are lost.”

“Reference data type parameters, such as objects, are also passed into methods by value. This means that when the method returns, the passed-in reference still references the same object as before. However, the values of the object’s fields can be changed in the method, if they have the proper access level.”

(reference: The Java Tutorial: Passing Information to a Method or Constructor)

Magic Poi

I just discovered the Apache POI Project.  I needed to export data from a JTable into an Excel spreadsheet and I didn’t want the hassle of exporting as csv and getting warnings from Excel, so a little search gave me POI, and it is simple and easy to use.

Download it and read the documentation that comes with the download (it seems to be a little more updated than the website).  Plenty of examples.

Best Of Both Worlds?

Looks like there are strengths to functional and imperitive programming, so would Scala, or a language like it, be the best of both worlds?

Functional Learning

I am looking into declarative programming languages. More specifically I am looking into the functional language Haskell; The concept of functional programming intrigues me. I want to know why/how it is helpful and what I can do with it. In this process, I am also learning about more about imperative languages, so I win all around.

Good Advice

First, this advice didn’t come from me;  I just like it so much that I want everyone to know about it.

I recently began reading the Object Mentor Blog and I came across this post, and it has really stuck a chord with me.  So often I find myself trying to hurry up and get it done, and that usually produces less than good code, which means I have to go back and fix it later or someone else will have to clean up my mess, which is no fun and embarrassing to say the least.  If, however, I take the time to carefully plan out what it is I am creating, use Test Driven Development, and slow down, etc, then the code I have just made will be less likely to break.

We delude ourselves that speed is better.  Not always.

Here are a few things “Uncle Bob” mentions in his blog post to be a professional craftsman:

1) Adopt an attitude of calm

2) Focus on the problem to be solved.

3) Solve the problem step by step without rushing

4) “When you feel the temptation to rush, resist it. Leave the keyboard and walk around. Distract yourself with something else. Do not give in to the call of your addiction.”

I am going to start remembering and implementing these suggestions;  I think I’ll be a better software engineer for it.  Thanks Uncle Bob.

As an update to the above about speed killing, I just read a post by Martin Fowler about Technical Debt.  Sometimes it may be good to deliver fast, poorly designed code that will cause you problems later in order to make an investment in the project, hit deadlines, etc knowing you will have to go back and refactor.

TicTacToe the Game

I finally finished a game!  This may seem like no big deal to most programmers, but for me it is, because I finally finished a game.  I have often started to write one but have always quickly become bogged down by the details.

So here it is in all of its glory!!  You can download it here.  Later, because now I have to get to work, I will go into the details of how I made it, and then everyone can give me tips on how to make it better.

Game Dev Focus

It’s been a very long time since I said I wanted to develop a game.  And I have been very busy since then.  Work, home, etc.  But I have been tinkering in the meantime.  I have experimented with Python using PyGame and Panda3D.  The trick to that is I don’t know Python (yet).  I have played around with java using  LWJGL, Slick, and a little bit of  jME.  I’ve even just did some accelrated graphics using Java2D thanks to the great tutorials on Coke And Code.

I am going to make a game; game development is fast becoming my software engineering passion.  I have decided to start with a simple Tic Tac Toe game using Java2D and accelerated graphics, which I have already begun to develop in the spare time I can spare.  If you are reading and are interested, keep coming back and see the results.

Thanks again for everyone in the world who creates game libraries, tutorials, etc.

JavaFx vs. Flex/Flash

KeyListener in JComboBox

You’ve seen those auto-complete combo boxes out there. SwingX has one, and it is a good one, but not exactly what I needed.  I didn’t want all of the highlighting and I didn’t want the options in the combo box to be static.  All my suggestions are coming from the database.

So what I discovered and what I want to share is how to listen for key events on an editable jComboBox.   If you did something like this:


jComboBox1.addKeyListener(new KeyListener() { ... }


You would not be notified of KeyEvents.  Why?  you ask.  When you type into an editable JComboBox the key events are not being fired on the JComboBox but rather on the editor of that JComboBox.


jComboBox1.getEditor().getEditorComponent().
addKeyListener(new KeyListener() { ... });


Simple as that!