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Monthly Archives: September 2016

Why work for a software company?

29 Sep

Episode 37

When I was looking for a new job recently, I had a strong resolution, that I’m going to work for a company that is doing software. Not telecommunication equipment that requires software. Not financial products that require software. Not trucks that require software. I wanted a company, that does the damn software for a living. And I will tell you why.

Case one: Technology Corporation

800px-base_transceiver_stationIt’s not bad, could be worse. Companies that focus on technology usually have some kind of understanding for engineers. Usually. There is the corporate aspect though with all the bureaucratic nonsense. The bigger the company is the more problematic the aspect of scale becomes. Some people are allergic to presence of nonsense, and probability dictates, that with scale, at some point you will encounter the nonsense and might get frustrated.

The urban legend says, there is a quarter million Euro device rusting on the shelf in a lab. It’s needed, but no one knows how to turn it on. The one competent guy who knew left the company because he was unable to get a hundred Euro rise. We can’t rehire him for a year because of policy. Meanwhile new people straight from university are paid more than that  competent guy who left, because Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on September 29, 2016 in Misc, Recruitment

 

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Good commit message

22 Sep

Episode 36

Last time we talked about version control, so let’s elaborate a bit on that. One of the aspects of using version control is the possibility of commenting on changes you do in the code. Actually, it shouldn’t be only the possibility, it should be a necessity.

The Template

Git documentation provides a standard template and guidelines for commit message, let’s have a look.

Capitalized, short (50 chars or less) summary

More detailed explanatory text, if necessary.  Wrap it to about 72 characters or so.  In some contexts, the first line is treated as the subject of an email and the rest of the text as the body.  The blank line separating the summary from the body is critical (unless you omit the body entirely); tools like rebase can get confused if you run thetwo together.

Write your commit message in the imperative: “Fix bug” and not “Fixed bug” or “Fixes bug.”  This convention matches up with commit messages generated by commands like git merge and git revert.

Further paragraphs come after blank lines.

– Bullet points are okay, too

– Typically a hyphen or asterisk is used for the bullet, followed by a single space, with blank lines in between, but conventions vary here

The News

The most important question to be answered by the commit message, is Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on September 22, 2016 in Misc, Technology

 

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Git Intro

15 Sep

Episode 35

Since last time I finally showed you some code and mentioned storing examples on GitHub, let’s talk about underlying version control system and surrounding tools. Many of you probably used SVN as version control, especially if you worked for big corporation which are not that fast at adopting new stuff. Some of you perhaps switched to Git, maybe after leaving the corporation for smaller and smarter company. Well, that would be me right now :)

The System

logomark-orange2x“Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency” says the homepage.

Git is distributed. Everyone has his own copy of the repository on a local machine. You can commit to it and fall back to earlier versions without relying on central server as in SVN. What about the Holy Trunk then? In typical workflow there is a base remote origin repository, where all changes are pulled, acting more or less like the SVN server and source of truth.

Git is fast. Contrary to SVN, each time you change a file, Git creates new snapshot of this file instead of delta between two files and adjusts the commit tree accordingly. This can take up a bit more space, but Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on September 15, 2016 in Technology

 

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Angular Intro

08 Sep

Episode 34

Talk is cheap. Show me the code.

– Linus Torvalds

          I’ve talked about recruitment and clean code recently, but I haven’t shown you any (or almost any) actual code for some time. Time to fix this. In November 2014 I’ve written articles about GWT and Vaadin. Now I’d like to present you something similar on AngularJS, which seems to be the most popular JavaScript framework nowadays. And despite being JavaScript, it’s actually pretty good. Let’s take a look.

Overview

AngularJS-huge

          Angular is a JavaScript open source front-end, single page, web application framework maintained by Google.

          It provides a standard structure for front-end project part, like GWT, much as Spring provide standard structure for back-end part. Its simplification, because you can do the front-end in Spring too via Spring MVC, and the structure for entire project is also partly defined by Maven or other convention over configuration type build tool, but it’s an idea to start with.

          It is single page framework, also like GWT, meaning Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on September 8, 2016 in News, Spring, Technology

 

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Embrace the Change

01 Sep

Episode 33

Everything changes and nothing stands still.

-Heraclitus

          Software changes. Technologies change. Build systems change. Deployment environments change. Requirements change. Markets change. Clients change. Some people refuse to change though. How to deal with all that fuss without losing sanity?

Wind of Change

          This week’s episode of How To Train Your Java is hosted outside of the usual place, namely on my company’s tech blog, right here. Enjoy :)

Sweet Sixteen

          By the way, if you happen to be in Wrocław, Poland in four weeks from now and you are not afraid of Polish language, you are welcome to join my talk on principles in object oriented programming. I’ve titled it Sweet Sixteen (since there will be 16 principles). Its free, includes beer and pizza, you just need to sign up on the event page, right here.

          In the next episode I will do something I haven’t done for quite some time. I will show you some actual code. Stay tuned.

embrace the change

 
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Posted by on September 1, 2016 in Agile, Sweet Sixteen, Technology

 

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