Joel Neely

Greenhorn
+ Follow
since Sep 03, 2013
Merit badge: grant badges
For More
Cows and Likes
Cows
Total received
In last 30 days
0
Forums and Threads

Recent posts by Joel Neely

I would be very interest in your thought on how the Method in your book compares to (or contrasts with) the philosophy and practices of agile development, including the enterprise-oriented approach of Scaled Agile.

Thanks!
Joel
4 years ago
I am interested in your views on the differences between the roles of "computer scientist", "software engineer", and "professional developer". There seems to be a trend (with which I disagree) in the software development community to discount the relevance of computing science (and Mathematics in general) to the working developer. Given the title, what does your book offer to working developers and how can I persuade my co-workers of the need for those concepts?

Thanks, and best of luck with the book!
Joel
8 years ago
If I may, I'll add just a quick comment, rather than a question.

The wealth of Java One sessions either on Java 8 features (e.g. streams, lambdas, etc.) or on future-version capabilities that are based on them (e.g. the currency API, the use of distributed lambdas and streams planned for Coherence, etc.) leaves me persuaded that this style is the future of Java.

It's really good to see the authors and JavaRanch doing such a good job covering this area.
9 years ago
I should emphasize that I'm not trying to trigger a language-advocacy flame-war with the question, and I don't find "one language to rule them all" arguments to be useful. But I have observed that most languages have a "sweet spot": types of problems for which they are particularly well suited. And some languages are particularly good at expressing specific concepts in programming.

So for what types of tasks, or what types of concepts, do you regard Python as a really good fit? (And why?)

Thanks!
9 years ago
Over the years, I have seen the term "legacy" used with different shades of meaning:

  1. Code without tests, or at least without thorough test coverage.

  2. Code that runs on old platforms, or in old frameworks, that the organization desires to replace.

  3. A collection of systems without clearly-separated services and layers.

  4. Systems/services that the organization wants to expose in a different style (e.g. shift from method-oriented API to resource-oriented protocol).

  5. Old stuff that the speaker would rather rewrite from scratch than work hard to understand.

  6. ...and others...


In addition, calling a system "legacy" sometimes is perceived by those who developed (or who maintain) it as code language for "You people aren't good programmers."


So I'm wondering if you can unpack the sense(s) in which you use the term "legacy" and provide specific guidance for each shade of meaning, especially in terms of helping teams that worked on the "legacy" software become active participants in the re-engineering work.


Thanks!
Java seems always to have allowed a mostly-Object-Oriented style, but not really forced it. (Auto-[un]boxing has helped, but the wallpaper over that seam isn't completely smooth.) This introduced procedurally-minded programmers to OO more gradually (benefit), but also allowed them to believe they were doing OO without fully embracing the OO programming style (dubious).

So the lessons of OO from other languages have taken quite a while to percolate through the Java community.

It would appear that Java 8 is (belatedly) beginning to bolt on specific features from Functional Programming in much the same way, allowing but not fully embracing FP style.

What sources/resources do you recommend to help legacy Java programmers really understand FP, rather than simply regarding lambdas, streams, etc. as added language features stirred into a procedural+OO+FP gumbo?
10 years ago
Hi, Simon,

Given that architecture doesn't directly tie to tangible, user-visible features, how do you help the business stakeholders understand the value of the time and effort spent on architecture?

Thanks!
Joel
10 years ago
Given the growing power of tools such as FindBugs and PMD, how well do you think the range of secure coding concerns can be instrumented by static analysis of source or bytcode?
10 years ago
I think that Burk's observation is on target. And I should clarify that "community" may refer to the individual organization, if sufficiently closed or large. When I hear language similar to "we're a Rails/Java/.Net/whatever shop", I immediately wonder about receptiveness to ideas/tools coming from "outside".

Burk Hufnagel wrote:John,
Do you have an opinion on Joel's second question:

Joel Neely wrote:If so, do you attribute that more to characteristics of those communities or to technical issues of the languages?


Given that you can write the tests in a different language, I think it may depend more on the community and their acceptance of polyglot progamming. What do you think?

Thanks,
Burk

11 years ago
Do you see more interest/adoption of BDD in the communities around dynamic languages than the static language communitites?
If so, do you attribute that more to characteristics of those communities or to technical issues of the languages?
Thanks!
11 years ago