Brent Sordyl's blog » java

Building Memory-efficient Java Applications – IBM Researchers

Brent Sordyl — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:02:18 +0000

1. Distributed development, layers of frameworks, and Java’s modeling
limitations make it easy to create bloated data designs.
2. In this environment, awareness of costs is essential for making informed
tradeoffs.
3. Some tradeoffs can be made without sacrificing speed or sound design.
4. The concept of data structure health – the ratio of actual data to its
representation – can illuminate where there is room for improvement,
and point out aspects of a design that will not scale

(Full Story: Building Memory-efficient Java Applications – IBM Researchers)

JVM Performance Tuning (notes) : twitter

Brent Sordyl — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:01:57 +0000

A presentation by Attila Szegedi titled “Everything I Ever Learned about JVM Performance Tuning @twitter” has been floating around for a few months. I’ve restructured much of the content into a set of notes. This covers the basics of memory allocation and garbage collection in Java, the different garbage collectors available in HotSpot and how they can be tuned, and finally some anecdotes from Attila’s experiences at Twitter.

(Full Story: JVM Performance Tuning (notes) : twitter)

Java is dead? 9 million devs disagree | zeroturnaround.com

Brent Sordyl — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:20:21 +0000

Java is still pretty darn cool: consider the widespread applicability and excellent engineering behind the JVM platform, the clarity of syntax, the rich ecosystem of tools and libraries and the fact that Oracle says there are over 9 million Java developers out there

(Full Story: Java is dead? 9 million devs disagree | zeroturnaround.com)

JRecord

Brent Sordyl — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:38:01 +0000

Guiding Principles

Method of reading / writing files should be the same no matter what the file format is.
Programmer should be shielded from the files format.
You should be able to edit files using the files description (Cobol Copybook, Xml or what ever).
Package should be flexible – easy to add new file formats or Record-Layout formats.

(Full Story: JRecord)

A Field Guide to Parsing and Creating Flat Files Using the Humble Flatworm

Brent Sordyl — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:37:52 +0000

Flat files. Much as we live in an XML/SOAP/Web Services world, there’s still a ton of data being moved around between proprietary and legacy applications that consists of fixed length fields delimited by EOLs. Around about the time I wrote my 20th Java class who’s only purpose in life was to suck up a flat file, use String.substring to break it up into pieces, and then populate a bean with it, I decided there had to be a better way. This package represents the fruit of that frustration.

(Full Story: A Field Guide to Parsing and Creating Flat Files Using the Humble Flatworm)

From Java to Node.js

Brent Sordyl — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:40:08 +0000

Spring is a popular framework in Java to provide a great deal of glue and abstraction functionality. It allows easy dependency injection, testing, object lifecycle management, transaction management, etc. It’s usually one of the first things I slap into a new project in Java. In Node.js, I haven’t really missed it. JavaScript allows much more flexible ways of decoupling dependencies and I personally haven’t felt the need to find a replacement for Spring. Maybe that’s a good thing?

(Full Story: From Java to Node.js)

Java tops list of software skills in demand: employer survey | ZDNet

Brent Sordyl — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:39:59 +0000

Here is Dice’s list of the top 10 software skills in demand as of January 2012:

Java/Java EE developers
Software developers/engineers
Mobile developers
.NET developers
Project managers
Web developers
System engineers/administrators
Network engineers/administrators
SAP professionals
Business analysts

(Full Story: Java tops list of software skills in demand: employer survey | ZDNet)

Flyaway – a java database migration tool

Brent Sordyl — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:39:38 +0000

You never develop code without version control, why do you develop your database without it? Flyway is database-independent library for tracking, managing and applying database changes.

(Full Story: Flyaway – a java database migration tool)

InfoQ: Understanding Java Garbage Collection and What You Can Do about It

Brent Sordyl — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:06:36 +0000

Gil Tene explains the workings of a garbage collector: terminology, metrics, fundamentals, key mechanisms, classification of current GCs, the “Application Memory Wall” problem, and details Azul C4 GC.

(Full Story: InfoQ: Understanding Java Garbage Collection and What You Can Do about It)

A reading list for JVM-based developers

Brent Sordyl — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:16:42 +0000

Java Performance, Java Concurrency in Practice, etc

(Full Story: A reading list for JVM-based developers)