General Development Archive

Groovy took a gigantic leap this past April, with the formal release of a new parser aimed at standardizing the language as part of the JSR process. If you weren't paying attention before, now's the time to start. The new syntax is chock full of enhancements to the language designed for a short learning curve and a big payoff. Resident Groovy practitioner Andrew Glover walks through most important changes to Groovy's syntax and shows you a handy feature you won't find in classic Groovy.

Classpath 0.17 has been released. This is mainly a bug fix release for issues found with eclipse 3.1 and free Swing applications just after our 0.16 release. But it also includes some exciting new features.

The Spec# programming system is a new attempt at a more cost effective way to develop and maintain high-quality software. Spec# is an extension of the object-oriented language C#. It extends the type system to include non-null types and checked exceptions. It provides method contracts in the form of pre- and postconditions as well as object invariants.

Ruby on Rails is a relatively new web application framework built on the Ruby language. It is billed as an alternative to existing enterprise frameworks, and its goal, in a nutshell, is to make your life -- or at least the Web development aspects of it -- easier. This article will contrast the Rails framework against a typical J2EE implementation using common open source tools that are regularly found in enterprise applications.

Django for Python is the most recently announced of what is becoming a long line of web frameworks inspired by Ruby on Rails. Others that have popped up include MonoRail for .NET & Mono, Subway for Python, Trails for Java, Catalyst and Maypole for Perl. In the context of all these rails derivatives, this article on "Could Rails have been built without Ruby?" is an interesting read.

In this excerpted chapter from his upcoming book, Programming Indigo, David Pallmann describes the Indigo programming model for building service-oriented applications.

The Question: With the emergence of .NET, J2EE, Python, PHP, et. al, has Perl lost its niche as a scripting glue language? The Answer: Tim O'Reilly gives his two cents.

In the Japanese edition of his latest book, Bjarne Stroustrup added an extended essay, reflecting on C++ use over the last decade, and presenting plausible directions for the next revision of the C++ standard. Download the PDF to see what he has to say.

"Last week, I listed what I think is wrong with Make. This week, I offer my suggestions for alternatives," writes Adrian Neagu on his editorial at Freshmeat.

IBM Workplace Managed Client Developer Toolkit is based on the Eclipse architecture and is compatible with Linux. It provides wizards, navigators, builders, and other tools for application developers who wish to develop, test, and deploy applications.

As seen on Slashdot: "At a very late stage Addison Wesley decided not to publish my book, 'The New C Standard: An economic and cultural commentary' I am making the pdf freely available. You can download the pdf (mirror). The organization is rather unusual in that the commentary covers each sentence of the C Standard (actually the latest draft of C0X, excluding library) one by one (all 2022 of them)."

Delta Debugging is an automatic and systematic technique that deals with isolation of the source of the failure -- often the developer's longest, most demotivating, and most repetitive activity when carried out manually. Read more...

Random numbers are utilized in many different areas, ranging from cryptography (in general) to source port and process ID randomization in some operating systems. So what is exactly a random number generator?

AJAX or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML seems to be all the rage at the moment. Builder has published a handy primer to get started using AJAX today.