If you're planning on using Spring with Hibernate, Data Access with the Spring Framework is a must read. This article makes it look easy (and simpler) to use Spring's Hibernate helper classes than the regular Hibernate API. Good stuff - this kind of stuff makes integrating Spring into AppFuse look like fun. Deleting code is always fun. I wonder if MyEclipse will roll in some support for the Spring Framework? What about IDEA? Yeah, I broke down and bought a copy. I could use some "get to know your IDE" tutorials though. One thing I learned from Open Source Programming (and originally from The Pragmatic Programmer) is get to know your IDE. I could certainly use some more expertise on Eclipse and IDEA. I'm going to buy MyEclipse, a good Eclipse book and go read some IDEA documentation. Ambitious plans right before bed - sure sounds good though. Links appreciated - I want to make my IDE-life easier.
Download or read the Release Notes. You know what bugs me about this release? The release notes suck! There's no changelog - what bugs got fixed, which ones didn't? Any new features? I suppose I could go crawling around their bug tracker and find out, but isn't this the kind of information you'd like to see with the release? Should I upgrade? Why should I upgrade - is something broke in 5.0.16 that's fixed in 5.0.18? Are there memory leaks that got fixed?
The only reason I develop on 4.1.29 these days is because my Remember Me feature works on 4.1.x, but not on 5.0.x. I could make it work on 5.0.x, but it wouldn't be as secure. I hope to implement Charles' recommended cookie strategy and then go for 5.0.x as my development platform, but that'll be a few more days.
On another note, I've implemented the Tomcat Ant tasks in AppFuse and I must say, these things are nice. The main advantage is speed, which all developers love.
One of the tips I picked up in J2EE Design and Development was to turn off automatic session-creation in your JSPs. So I tried this today on my project, and it doesn't seem to work. Basically this involved putting the following at the top of your JSPs:
<%@ page session="false"%>
I did this by adding this to my taglibs.jsp, which is included in every other JSP - so it should affect all my JSPs and prevent a session from being created on my welcome-file - right? Not according to Tomcat's Manager application - it still increments the number of sessions as I hit the welcome page with different browsers. Am I doing something wrong?
I'd love to get this working - so sessions are only created when a user logs in. Those JSPs that need a session, I'll override the default with session="true". I often see a whole bunch of sessions on the wiki and roller apps on this site - and in reality - a session should never be created, unless I login. At least I think that's how this is designed to work...
Another reason why PowerBooks rule: I starting running "ant test-all" right before I left for the office this morning. I closed the lid as it was starting Tomcat to run Cactus tests. When I got to the office, I opened the lid, and Tomcat continued starting and all the tests finished running. Can your laptop do that?
Richard seems to think that most open source developers are like starving artists:
While a few make really good money selling consulting and training and other services, the vast majority of open source developers don't make anything.
For some reason, I don't believe this. The open source projects I participate in, as well as the ones I admire and use - all seem to have developers that are gainfully employed and making money. Of course, this may just be a Java open source phenomenon.
To do open source, you have to have a day job. You can't expect open source to feed your family or even your cat for that matter. As I said there are exceptions, but most open source developers do it for the love of writing software. While commercial software developers do a great job of feeding their families, open source developers do a better job of feeding their minds. In the end, you have to ask yourself which is more important: The things you own or freedoms you have.
Very good points. I dig working on AppFuse, as well as Roller, Struts Menu, and the Display Tag because I can do whatever I want. I can implement silly features like Clickstream and I don't have to ask anyone if it's a good idea (I'm still debating this).
Back to my point though. I firmly believe that most Java Open Source Developers are gainfully employed and not starving artists. Part of this comes from the fact that most of the big projects I work with (i.e. Struts and Hibernate) have some smart folks on staff, and the popularity of their projects has provided them with more opportunity, hence they're employed.
Personally, I do open source because I want to learn. I want to write code that gets scrutinized by the masses. As an independent consultant, I rarely get another person looking at my code - so I turn to the community by opening my code (that I use on a daily basis) to other developers. Overall, having others look at my code has resulted in much higher quality software for my clients, and has helped me learn a lot in the process as well.
I also look at open source development as a good marketing campaign - here's what I can do, hire me. This has proved very successful so far. Hence, my formula: Open Source Development = good marketing = gainful employment.
