I want no monuments

After a long time, I finally managed to get Safari working again and steadily. Well, almost. Still something breaks here and there, but definitely usable.

So, to recap:

• Ensure you got the latest wine installed (wine-0.9.54 here)
• Download Safari from the Apple website and install it
• HERE’S THE MISSING STEP: install corefonts then copy the installed TTF files into your $HOME/.wine/drive_c/Programmi/windows/fonts folder (”Programmi” is definitely italian, so translate it)
• Run Safari with an easy “wine Safari” in the console (I suggest to use the console just to look at what it’s doing and to check if it’s complaining somehow)

Enjoy!

I’ve found the Safari.exe process is not correctly terminated when you close all its windows, so you’ll have to kill it manually. Also, go immediately to youtube (you’ll find the link in the bookmarks bar) and head over to Adobe to install the flash player (or you’ll experience some ugly white boxes while surfing)

And thanks to these guys.

Despite my deficiencies as a meeting organizer, the January meeting (the very first one this year) has just been closed and it was a good one.

I finally managed to study SoapUI and to briefly show its functionalities in the quickie, while Bruno showed us the new features of Java SE 6: scripting could be real fun… I have to look deeper into it, especially considering my previous post.

As always, all the bits (slides and code) showed and used during the meeting will be available on the JUG wiki page in the coming days.

Now come nearer the monitor, because I prefer to whisper this: next meeting we’ll probably have a new location! Sshhhh!!! Don’t tell anybody!

After four months doing TDD, trying to understand a data driven application I’m keeping on receiving pats on my back for the good job!

Two managers congratulating me at least once a week for my approach, for my enthusiasm, for the continuous integration box, and me explaining them how these things are making things easier, more robust and more secure.

But…
Today another bug came out from the other part of the application, made by the other team. One of my managers asked me how these all could be avoided and me answering tests! unit, functional, human… just test it!. The answer disarmed my enthusiasm:

Yeah, but then it all costs more money

What? Why the hell have you paid my salary until now? Is it because the money I get is not yours? Are you schizophrenic? To which one of you am I talking?

By the way, now I know how it could be that my coworkers are still not doing TDD.

My managers are probably lying (to me or to themselves) as on the one hand they say something while on the other they do the opposite.

Has anyone seen this pattern and knows how the situation can be changed (apart from resigning, since the contract it’s going to terminate in two months) ?

Today I’ve had the pleasure to read InfoQ^[0] and its comments about Ola Bini’s^[1] opinion about the coming or not of a Next Big Language.

I share Ola’s opinion: no big language for your future, forget it.

Newer apps will be built with a mix of different languages, because each tool is born to solve one or few problems, and usually they are very good at it. Increasing software complexity will lead to a finer grained choice about which language best fits the problem to solve.

Question is: how do these languages communicate? Ola thinks they are all going to live on top of a JVM. That’s probably what will happen. Because that will make things easier.

That leads to the next question: will Java die? No. If we are going to stay in the JVM (and there is already evidence of it: JRuby, Groovy, Scala, Jython…) then we will gently move to these new worlds while keeping on using, developing, improving and investing on our solid code base.

I think no one can really predict the death of a language. We could only throw thoughts about what could change.

Language interoperability and polyglot programming could be good guesses.

Very good week, very good talks, very nice venue, wonderful croissants, very nice people, ugly photos! (photographer’s fault)

One nice note: a good number of talks was related to agile and there were always quite a crowd of people attending.

Ready, set, go! In 6 hours from now I’ll officially start my trip to Antwerpen and get my week of professional vacation.

I’ve just set up my agenda (beta version, of course)

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

See you next week!

The Javaday 2007, roman edition, is over

If you, like me, have ever wondered if this multicore kind of hype was worth the money, after watching this video you will definitely find the answer.

To sum up: if a processor running at full power is giving you 100% of itself, it happens that running at half the power it still gives you an 80%. So, by combining two processors and running them at half power, we consume as much electricity as one processor at full power but we gain 160%.

But the most interesting thing is the heterogeneous processor: one processor made of few “big” cores (like the one we use today) and a bunch of tiny little cores (like a dozen of 486). It would be able to perform well and consume “normally” with old-style apps (long, single thread computations) and to perform well and consume less with new-style apps (short, parallel computations).

My personal goal now is to start thinking “parallel”. How could I do that while working on the server side?

I’ve never been so busy as I am during these ending months!

Apart from the daily job (I’ll blog about it the next few days), last weekend I took part at the local Linux Installation Party.

Thanks to Cascina Rocca Franca (a very nice public place in Turin, made to help people meet and hold courses about almost everything) we set up our notebooks, desktops, empty CD/DVD piles, cables and so on to give help to some tens of newbies and questionings.
You know, the more I do things like this (presentations, LIPs, linux/java/etc day) the more I like them. I can’t explain my feelings when some unknown person says me “thank you”. If you can get the opportunity to do something similar, do that! Your ego will greatly enjoy it!

Anyway, Sunday was time for “Fa la cosa giusta” (”Do the right thing”, in english). Again, a great time. I’ve spent about 3 hours walking around, speaking with representatives from various associations and companies.
It was all around the ethical and environmental side of life: thinking twice when buying something, ignoring the cool adv girls. Ethical, social and environment friendly turism, finance, banking, washing, eating, dressing… and energy, of course.
Indeed, an energy provider was the most interesting part of the fair.
La220 is an italian energy provider with various fares: one of them (the “green” one) claims to come completely from renewable resources, solar in particular. Such claim is certified by Legambiente, the most important environmentalist association in Italy.
I think in two months at most they will become my energy provider.

And for the next weeks? Uh, a crowd of students and Javapolis, at Antwerp, together with Filippo, Guido, Luca and Bruno.

Can you see it on the right? (lower right actually)

All you need to do is to import the following script:

javadaylink.js

I’ve edited the sidebar.php page of my wordpress theme in order to get it as I wanted

Thanks to Fabio!