Are you running Tomcat with HTTPS and still wondering if you are actually safe? Plenty of teams have flipped the switch on SSL in Tomcat 6 and called it a day. The padlock shows up, the boss smiles, and traffic looks scrambled in the sniffer. But that default setup often…
Category: Software Engineering
Comprehensive insights into building, architecting, and managing software systems. From code craftsmanship to team dynamics, explore the technical and organizational aspects of software development.
Avoiding Scriptlets: Cleaner Separation in Legacy Apps
\n \n\n\n\n Published on Feb 20 at 00:04 \n \n Avoiding Scriptlets: Cleaner Separation in Legacy Apps: JSP from a practitioner�s perspective with timeless lessons. \n \n A late night in a JSP dungeon \n \n Last night I was chasing a NullPointer on a page that looked innocent. A…
JSPWiki in Practice: Small but Capable
Small tools rarely make a splash. They just show up, do the work, and keep quiet. JSPWiki in Practice sits right in that space. It is a Java wiki that feels modest at first glance, yet it carries more than enough muscle for a team that wants a shared brain…
Trying OpenSolaris: ZFS, DTrace, and a Different Feel
There is a particular silence when a machine boots a new system for the first time. Fans whisper. The drive light flickers like a heartbeat. Tonight I burned an OpenSolaris image, slid it into a spare box that usually runs a familiar penguin, and let curiosity do the rest. The…
SOAP Endpoints that Don’t Hurt
\n \n \n �Make it easy for people to do the right thing, and the right thing tends to happen.� \n \n \n\n \n A coffee fueled wake up call \n I walked into the office with a lukewarm latte and a pager that would not stop blinking. A partner�s…
BlueJ in Education: Teaching Objects Clearly
BlueJ keeps popping up in my inbox this month. With NetBeans 6 freshly out, Eclipse Europa still going strong, and Sun pushing Java hard in schools after freeing the source, a lot of teachers are choosing tools for the next semester. The question sounds simple: what should a first time…
Separating Content and Presentation with FreeMarker
The web is buzzing with new frameworks and shiny toys. Rails keeps the volume up, Facebook apps are everywhere, and in Java land teams are split between JSF, Spring MVC, and Struts 2. In the middle of that mix there is one topic that keeps showing up in client calls…
Updating and Autoloading Modules: A Practical Guide
Updating and Autoloading Modules sounds like something only the platform team would love. Truth is, if you are shipping on the NetBeans Platform, it is your daily bread. With NetBeans 6 and its shiny Plugin Manager, the whole story got more approachable, but the ideas have been around for a…
The business of software: Pick One Job and Charge For It
Software as a Business is not a theory. It is a daily grind of choices that look small in the morning and decide your month by night. I have been shipping and selling software long enough to know the difference between a cool demo and something a customer will pay…
The business of software: Writing Software vs Running a Business
Software as a business is not the same sport as writing software. I say this after a long night of shipping a tiny feature, answering support at odd hours, and staring at a graph that refuses to climb. If you are coding your heart out and still feeling stuck, this…