Raible Designs

Bloody Noses and Struts Chapter Progress

I've gotten three bloody noses in the last 36 hours - and I don't seem to recall ever having them before in my life! Yikes - is the stress getting to me?! Oh well, I'm sure I'll be fine. I read on a website today that bloody noses are way over-emphasized and they aren't a big deal at all.

I'm at 22 pages on the Struts chapter now, doing Exceptions and how Struts lets you declare exceptions in your struts-config.xml -- pretty cool stuff. The bad part is that I've never used them before, so it's kinda tough to write about them - at least in the context of Struts. I tried to use Strut's ApplicationException (now renamed ModuleException) last summer on a client's project - and it was too buggy to use. Now it seems to to work as I originally expected it to, and it's pretty sweet. I do feel like I'm building an application to show functionality though, rather than developing an application to fulfill some requirements, which is unfortunate. I'd rather build an application that employs KISS, and shows the easy way to do things. It's like using design patterns because your manager thinks they're a good idea, but you could get the project done in half the time without them. Sure, your app might not be extendable in the future, but if it doesn't live past 3 months, what's the point?! Of course, I think using the Validator and Tiles is easy, and many developers think that's the complicated part. If my learning curve was up to snuff, Exception and Modules (a.k.a sub-applications) would be easy. Soon they will be, though I still may never use them.

Tomorrow is my last day (for a while) as a full-time employee of Raible Designs. I've certainly enjoyed the last year, but I've missed the office comradery and face-to-face interaction. It'll be good to get back into an office, but I'm sure I'll miss coding in my living room within a week, and wish I was back here.

I'm going to get my mugshot tomorrow for the Wrox book - I've convinced Abbie and Julie to go with me so we can get some good family photos - should be fun. After that, I'm going to fill out the paperwork - W2's - for the new gig, and then off to a project kick-off party! Sounds like my kind of project already!! It's got a good name too - Project Fiji. One of the things I'm looking forward to is implementing Struts and Hibernate (if they'll let me) using XDoclet. I've done it in my sample project and AppFuse (expect a new release in a week), but it'll be awesome to cut our development time in half right away! Especially when the first deliverable is due January 15th!

If I'm good (and I can figure it out), I hope to use Maven on the project as well. It should be interesting to be the primary Java Developer on the project, along with a Web Developer and Oracle DBA. I've always been the web developer - but I've learned so much in the past year and a half (since I met Struts), that I feel more than comfortable being the Java guy. You know what the best part is - I feel like I've learned more from the java.blogs community than I have from studying for certifications, or from any conferences I've been to. Keep it up - learning is awesome!

You know what the better part is? Julie just said to me - "thanks for making all my dreams come true." Enough said, life is awesome - even with toilet paper stuffed up my nose and a chapter that seems like it'll never get done.