Danny’s Blog

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 [...]

It’s been almost two weeks since RubyEnRails 2006, the first big Dutch/Belgian Ruby and Rails event. I think it’s safe to say that it was a success. Over 100 visitors showed up; we had an excellent venue and six very entertaining sessions:

Frank Oxener (Agile Dovadi) gave a live demo of building a Rails app and [...]

For some mysterious reason, there seems to exist a correlation between the temperature outside and the amount of entries on my blog. A sudden and long-awaited spell of sunny weather has been making Holland happy for more than two weeks now. In the evenings I am faced with the choice between sitting outside for a [...]

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 [...]

In Holland we have a yearly development contest called “Development Tools” (formerly RAD Race). In two days, several teams consisting of two coders build an administrative application according to fixed requirements, with database access, forms, reports, the works. The contest was originally organized for 4GL RAD tools, but in recent years Java teams have entered [...]

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 [...]

In the recent, rather entertaining discussion between James McGovern and the rest of the world, about Ruby and Rails being enterprise-ready or not, a lot of emphasis was placed on the speed of development that Ruby and Rails may offer. Anne Zelenka correctly stated that speed of development isn’t all that important in an enterprise [...]

For me, one of the principles of programming has always been: “Use the programming language best suited for the job; and if there is none, create a new language.” I believe this is directly related to the idea of Domain Specific Languages (DSL) that are all the rage right now. Creating a new language that [...]

After marvelling over the idea behind Campfire, I wondered how easy Rails would make it to start my own campfire. After all, the concept doesn’t seem to be all that complex: log people’s messages and feed them back to all the other people in the same chatroom. There’s some bells and whistles around that, like [...]

After writing the post about exclamation mark methods in Ruby yesterday evening, I couldn’t get to sleep (lesson learned: don’t go straight to bed after blogging). My mind was still churning away over the whole issue. And just before I fell asleep, in the short period of time when a lucid state of geniality bordering [...]