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Tag Archives: Java

Java and Scalability

Every time I hear someone say that Java is “scalable” my initial reaction is to kick the person who said it in the shin. I have been talking to a lot of people lately about the tools we are using at Gnip. Every time I tell someone that major parts of our system are written in […]

Posted 16 June 2008 † Peter Williams § Software Development ‡ Comments (5) ° Also tagged:

When To Use Exceptions

Marty Alchin recently posted about the “evils” of returning None (or nil or null depending on your language of choice). I think he has it basically right. Sure there are situations where returning nil1 is appropriate, but they are pretty rare. For example, if a method actually does what the client asked and there is […]

Posted 21 November 2007 † Peter Williams § Software Development ‡ Comments (5) ° Also tagged: , , ,

Java Daemon

Lately I have been writing a Java program that needs to run in the back ground (like a daemon). I found a couple of neat little tricks that can make this easier. These ideas probably only work in a Unix environment but they have been tested on Linux and Solaris. So you have your program and […]

Posted 25 March 2005 † Peter Williams § Software Development ‡ Comments (52) ° Also tagged:

Stop Over-Reacting

One of my pet peeves with Java is the member access modifiers. I despise the semantics of private. My problem with private is that it prevents subclasses from accessing the member. This is almost always a bad idea. Basically you are saying, “I know how my code should be used all other developers are too […]

Posted 23 March 2005 † Peter Williams § Software Development ‡ Comments (1) ° Also tagged: