3 Core Principles from 1998

I was off for the holidays which gave me some time to clean out the storage area. I ran across some notes from a conference I attended in 1998 and 3 core principles stood out that I thought I would share as we start this new year.

Core Principles (as I wrote them many years ago):
1. Smaller is better than larger
2. Understood is better than unknown
3. Progress is better than promises

Smaller is better than larger
There was nothing else written and I left nothing by way of context... regardless of what it meant then, it is clear that this is a great principle when it comes to code. Less code that does the same amount of work is better. The paradox is that it may take a little more time to develop a smaller code solution, but it pays off. The skill is in not being so abstract and so small as to not be readable or maintainable. It is this balance that makes a true software craftsman.

Understood is better than unknown
If there is one word that we would use to describe the issues of software development... it is the word "unknown". Estimating the known is easy. Estimating the unknown, is unknowable. The skill in software development is to separate the unknowns from the knows. Estimate the knowns and provide a SWAG estimate for the unknowns... these are estimates that you need to keep in check. It is best to delay the estimates and work of the unknowns until ( what Kevlin Henney brilliantly describes as) the last responsible moment. Of course this only works for the known unknowns... what will get you is the unknown unknowns:)

Progress is better than promises
This is why I have been a practitioner and trainer for XP and agile practices for many years. It is all about developing business value on a regular and iterative basis. Promises are meaningless... progress is all that matters.

Happy New Year!!

Intellij 9 and Gradle

One of the hidden gems of the Intellij 9 release is it's support for Gradle. Some of the information on the web is out of date and some features are not intuitive. This post will detail some of the nuances and follow it up with a wish list for the next update :)

Gradle Support
The information from JetBrains is out of date. In order to setup gradle after the GA release, all you need to do is configure the gradle home under File -> Other Settings -> Template Setttings.


Gradle Intellij Nuances
After setting up IDEA to work with Gradle, you'll need a build file. I didn't discover a way to create a gradle build file from IDEA. Just create a new file and name it "build.gradle" in the root of the module directory structure.

When writing the build script, Intellij expects to work with gradle in a way that is depreciated. It will pick up on a createTask(..) method. If the cursor is on a task such as this, and you hit ctrl+shft+F10, it will auto-discover and run that task in the script. (cool stuff)

Hotkeys to know:
ctrl+shft+F10 - runs task the cursor is on
shft+F10 - runs the last script (or the last run)
alt+shft+F10 - pops up a run menu (with all previously run gradle run configs)

The figure below shows an alt+shft+F10 when the cursor is on a task called task2.


If you code gradle in a non-depreciated way... then IDEA does not auto-discover the tasks. Below is what one would expect in a gradle build file:

usePlugin 'java'

repositories {
mainCentral()
}

// from the gradle user guide
// http://www.gradle.org/0.8/docs/userguide/tutorial_using_tasks.html
task hello << {     
 println 'Hello world'  
}   
task intro(dependsOn: hello) << {   
 println "I'm Gradle"  
}  

Tasks would normally be created this way... It is still great that IDEA has gradle support in general regardless of this oversight. After a run configuration is configured with a targeted task, it worlds with no pain. Also you could add:

 defaultTasks "intro"

and gradle runs this as the fallback when IDEA doesn't provide the required task.

Intellij / Gradle features I'm looking forward to:

1. IDEA understands proper task configuration
2. IDEA makes it easy to create new projects with a structure maven and gradle expects.
3. IDEA treats gradle as a peer with Maven and Ant. This includes:
   a. Gradle Window (similar to the ant build and maven projects panels)
   b. Before Launch Gradle tasks in the run configurations
   

More Trouble with Java and Apple

Well the latest update for Java from Apple came through recently. Destroying all in its path...
If you followed my advice in the past on getting Java 1.5 working on a Snow Leopard, then the new Apple update destroys that with the follow error for a Java 5 java -version:
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Unable to load native library: libjava.jnilib
Abort trap

I didn't track down the exact issue... however it is easy to detect that the Java update converts the symbolic links for Java 1.5 to point back to Java 6... Apparently Apple is NOT sorry for their crazy choice of ignorantly doing this in the first place. The solution is to completely go through the process out lined at OneSwarm again and re-establish the symbolic links. This will require you to delete the symbolic links that point to "CurrentJDK" for 1.4, 1.4.2, 1.5, and 1.5.0.

After edits an ls -l in the /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions should look like:

drwxr-xr-x  15 root  wheel  510 Dec  5 22:18 .
drwxr-xr-x  12 root  wheel  408 Dec  5 22:15 ..
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel    5 Dec  5 21:35 1.3 -> 1.3.1
drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel  102 Jul 20 18:35 1.3.1
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel    5 Dec  5 22:18 1.4 -> 1.4.2
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel   14 Dec  5 22:18 1.4.2 -> 1.4.2-leopard/
drwxr-xr-x@  9 root  wheel  306 Feb 12  2009 1.4.2-leopard
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel    5 Dec  5 22:01 1.5 -> 1.5.0
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel   14 Dec  5 22:00 1.5.0 -> 1.5.0-leopard/
drwxr-xr-x@ 10 root  wheel  340 Dec  5 21:59 1.5.0-leopard
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel    5 Dec  5 21:35 1.6 -> 1.6.0
drwxr-xr-x   8 root  wheel  272 Nov  8 14:35 1.6.0
drwxr-xr-x   9 root  wheel  306 Dec  5 21:35 A
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel    1 Dec  5 21:35 Current -> A
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel    3 Dec  5 21:35 CurrentJDK -> 1.6

Happy coding!