General Development Archive

Aspect-oriented programming is more than just a clever means of adding tracing to in-field code. The language has matured to a point where it can support both development-time and production-time code aspects. Stephen Morris briefly provides some background and then shows you how to get productive quickly with AspectJ.

Did you know that there are three different C++ namespace types? Namespaces, which are simple to learn and apply, offer a clever means of packaging your code and can assist when symbol conflicts occur. And how well does your code handle exceptions? Inserting exception-handling code can make your code more ready for packaging as external functions. Stephen Morris contends that just as namespaces offer an efficient way to package code, the skillful use of exception handling can quickly simplify that code.

"What Shale isn't is a shrink-wrapped, well-documented, well-tested product complete with an automated installer and a polished management interface. now find out what it is, as Brett McLaughlin unveils this mighty - and rightful - heir to the legacy of Struts. In this first of a five-part series, Brett explains what Shale is, how it's different from the Struts framework, and how to install and set it up in your development environment."

GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection, version 4.1 has been released. The list of changes details the improvements. The Fedora team has already incorporated it and Fedora Core 5 will have 4.1 as the system compiler with GCC 3.2 provided as an alternative for compatibility reasons.

Potix has released ZK 1.0, the XUL-Java-Ajax-Beanshell based web application framework. The framework aims to simplify developing Ajax based web development by minimizing configuration and lowering developer skill requirements. A live demo is available.

"The AJAX Toolkit Framework is a J2EE based technology that assists in constructing Eclipse framework support for AJAX toolkits on Linux and provides enhanced DHTML/Javascript IDE features for AJAX developers. This enables support of DOM browsing and JavaScript debugging by using Mozilla XULrunner to embed the Mozilla browser component (Gecko) in the Eclipse framework."

"This website will provide you with lessons and quality material to learn basics of C language programming in just a few days. All you have to do read trough my lessons. You will notice I'm putting new lessons up every day or two. It would be practical if you had Visual Studio installed on your computer and used it parallel to these lessons, but it isn't neccessary."

"OpenLaszlo is a rich client application architecture that uses Macromedia to build Flash widgets with XML and JavaScript logic. This article details the basic concepts of OpenLaszlo, and gives examples of situations in which an OpenLaszlo solution might be beneficial and it also details how it compensates for the shortcomings of Ajax dynamic web development."

"Valgrind is a CPU simulator which is used by KDE and many other projects to profile and debug our programmes. In the interview below Valgrind author Julian Seward talks to KDE Dot News about why he developed Valgrind, how you can use it and, most importantly, where the name comes from."

"The introduction of new object-oriented programming features in PHP V5 has significantly raised the level of functionality in this programming language. Not only can you have private, protected, and public member variables and functions - just as you would in the Java, C++, or C# programming languages - but you can also create objects that bend at runtime, creating new methods and member variables on the fly. You can't do that with the Java, C++, or C# languages. This kind of functionality makes super-rapid application development systems, such as Ruby on Rails, possible."

Should you make your C++ classes more intelligent or centralize the intelligence and use dumbed-down surrounding classes? The natural world tends to prefer a pass-the-parcel style of distributed intelligence, which reduces single points of failure and potentially leads to more stable systems. In this article, Stephen Morris shows you how to raise the IQ of your classes while simultaneously allowing other (possibly) more-qualified classes to handle specific problems. The chain of responsibility pattern provides an elegant model for facilitating this behavior.

Remote Python Call is a transparent infrastructure for RPC and distributed computing with the python language. It gives you complete and seamless control over a remote python interpreter and lets you execute code either synchronously or asynchronously (which means remote operations do not block and return AsyncResults). It is ideal for managing distributed tests on several platforms.

"I've always assumed that ifup and ifdown were conditional commands that performed their assigned duties only if the interface device in question was up or down, as the command might be. I was dead wrong. I blame my mistake on being a programmer, rather than being stupid, but it's simply too close to call. The if in ifup, ifdown, and ifstatus is not a programmer's if - it's an abbreviation for interface. On the off chance that I'm not the only one who has misunderstood these commands because of their rather iffy names, here's what they really do and how they are used."

Agile development sounds great; what could go wrong? Matt Heusser examines some of the myths, mysteries, and classic mistakes in Agile development, including some things to consider before jumping into Agile with both feet.