Danny’s Blog

When expectations are high, you’re invariably up for some disappointment. Charles and Tom were unable to demo Rails-in-a-war-on-Glassfish; but at least they gave a warning in advance. But I definitely expected something more–or rather something else–from Eric Evans’ university session on domain-driven design (ddd).
The afternoon session on scripting languages went well enough anyway–or at least, [...]

Just arrived in Antwerp, Belgium, for the JavaPolis 2006 conference which starts tomorrow morning. Same venue (Metropolis, where I stopped on the way to pick up this year’s goodies bag), same hotel (Astrid–yeah I know it has a tacky name but it’s really not that cheap). Fortunately, the state of Antwerp’s wireless networking has advanced [...]

So much to do in this hot and cold summer (July: 36 degrees, August: 16 degrees) and so little to blog about. In case anybody wonders, this is what I’ve been up to lately.
Gone back two years in time: After I finally left the WebLogic project in May, a little later than planned, I was [...]

Twice a year the Dutch Java User Group organizes a mini conference with sessions about Java, JEE, and everything related. In spring this day is called J-Spring (which has nothing to do with the Spring framework), in fall it’s called J-Fall. While preparing for RubyEnRails 2006 I thought it would be a good idea to [...]

After installing and playing with JRuby a few days ago, I started wondering if it would be possible to access an EJB from a JRuby script. After all, the Java code to call an EJB is purely client code, only communicating with an application server over an HTTP-like protocol (HTTP-like in BEA’s case, anyway). At [...]

Following up on my recent post on Ruby and Rails’ enterprise-readiness, we might want to rethink any strategies comparing or opposing Ruby with Java. Don’t get me wrong: Ruby is a breeze where Java is a mouldy draught; Ruby is a butterfly where Java is an ostrich; Ruby makes you smile where Java is often [...]

Normally I prefer trying to write an original text of my own; but in this case I can’t help but pass the word. This post thought the words out loud right out of my mouth: Reuse is vastly overrated, by Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson. Quote:
Reuse only works well when the particular instances are so [...]

I’m not so good at saying goodbyes, so the end of a long term project always brings me mixed feelings: I’m eager to take on something new, start afresh, meet new people, tackle new problems — but I hate saying goodbye to the team of people I’ve been working with so closely, people I’ve seen [...]

In a recent post, Stuart Halloway wrote that his company bids up to 50% lower for projects done with Rails, compared to similar Java projects. For applications ‘nowhere near the Rails sweet spot’ they still bid 10% lower. So the question arises: what is that sweet spot? For what projects would you rather choose Rails [...]

Someone on our (Java) project team has so fallen for Ruby that he is now trying to force the Java code into Rubyesque patterns. He has found an ally for this in the Commons Collections Closure interface. What he seems to want to do in Java is the equivalent of:
sum = 0
list.each { |item| sum [...]