XeNoNiQUe Productions UK - Latest Comments

Re: Digital Java EE 7 Training Series 1 Episode 1

Lars Lemos — Fri, 04 Nov 2016 02:50:49 -0000

Your are welcome.
I like your speech speed and clarity of terms.
In terms of content, I think that all of Ur 2 books covers all of necessary for a JavaEE developer to start and improve and get up to speed with the nowadays enterprise needs.
Apart from other books I read, yours is the only one that includes the the main JEE7 frameworks and future specifications(MVC 1) and integration with Angular, taking into consideration that most of Java Devs are really not familiar with JS frameworks, and most of them want to satisfy the needs of Web interfaces.
Your videos could focus on providing the updates that are now available with AngularJS integration with Java EE and taking your experience in consideration, that could be used sort of "Clean code" guideline for us devs that are eager to implement all the "shine" features of JS into our already JavaEE apps, because every dev ready it's reference and we end up with a project without a clear coding approach pattern/guideline.
By the way me and my team are waiting for more of your videos, and in future I'm planning to provide a session on our JUG based on your book.

Re: Digital Java EE 7 Training Series 1 Episode 1

Peter Pilgrim — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 05:24:21 -0000

Thank you Lars for your generous feedback.

What content would you like to see? What stuff should be improved?

Re: Digital Java EE 7 Training Series 1 Episode 1

Lars Lemos — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 04:07:03 -0000

I read the 2 books and, I'm eagerly waiting for more videos of the serie.
Keep up the good work.

Re: Press Update: 39 Java experts that you should follow on Twitter

Peter Pilgrim — Fri, 09 Sep 2016 10:20:07 -0000

It illustrates that Java EE community is split in two or possibly three ways. The first set members do not care enough about the immediate future or have a lack of knowledge of the trouble coming around the corner. The members of the second set are very concerned about Java EE 8 and they are wise enough have architectural foresights into social-economical market. The third set are those people who are about jump ship outside of Java EE 8 into another solution X and Y, because they think it will fail to deliver the requirements that their customers and user want in their applications.

Re: Press Update: 39 Java experts that you should follow on Twitter

David Stephan — Fri, 09 Sep 2016 07:57:12 -0000

Thanks a lot for all this expert advice blog. Yes, true that we at least have different 3 Java EE related surveys which illustrates the lack of power of the development community.

Re: Contractors: Avoid TEST-FIRST software engineering testing platforms

Peter Pilgrim — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 08:35:45 -0000

Hi David
Thanks for feeding back. I am glad only to help spread awareness. Are you a technical leader? Which side of the fence are you normally sitting on (candidate or interviewer)?

Re: Contractors: Avoid TEST-FIRST software engineering testing platforms

David Stephan — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 06:42:18 -0000

I recently got an email regarding the test schedule and I never thought that can have any bad impact. I really feel relaxed after I got to read this blog. Thanks for your suggestion.

Re: Java EE 8 in Crisis

Caleb Cushing — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 09:59:30 -0000

Admittedly I care about JPA, JDBC, and Servlet, but that's only because I don't want to have to rely on individual implementations. For everything else so far Spring has been significantly better than EE spec-ed software (wildfly was a pain, glassfish is undermaintained, does anyone use geronimo?).

JDBC, and Servlet the most, though. I don't actually foresee changing ORMs but I do connect to different dbs. I also see being able to deploy apps to different servers being important.

Also, though I've yet to dig into it, @Transactional in Spring (its annotation) seems to imply its different from JTA and JTA may require external deps, or something like that.

Re: Java EE 8 in Crisis

John Wright — Sat, 11 Jun 2016 00:56:47 -0000

Hmm. You don't need to mildly insult me with the quotes around programmer or the mocking tone of genius. What is wrong with a polite and civilised debate?

Didn't Hibernate come before JPA? Didn't Spring have annotation based configuration before EE? Didn't Spring Batch come before J2EE 7?

Servlets were effectively done years ago as were transactions, JAXB, JAXRS etc etc There is little needed to innovate in these areas and if there is, that comes from people who need things a bit faster than a 2-3 year release cycle. Reactive features could arguably go in a future EE, but if I want to use it I won't wait for Oracle, I will use a library now from GitHub!

Security may well rest on Servlets but its relying on years old technology and it fills a gap that Sun and Oracle don't care to fill. Who wants to wait years for Oracle to add Security to EE? I want Security changes to evolve rapidly to meet new threats.

My comment said "Doesn't anyone care anymore". I don't believe that they do and judging by the apathy of my fellow developers I am not alone. The only people who seem to care are people who write books and big corporations who like tick boxes.

The core things needed are done and any engineering effort that Oracle do will go into SE rather than EE.

You are right that even Spring will be a dead horse one day, everything evolves or dies.

Re: Java EE 8 in Crisis

darkcg — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:27:31 -0000

Another "programmer" who never took the time to learn the foundations of what he uses and think that Spring could exist without Java EE. Tell me, genius, how do you configure a Spring project? Exactly, using Servlets / Filters. Every container you use for a Spring project is, for the most important part, a servlet container. What do you use for storing objects into databases? Exactly, a thin wrapper around JPA. Spring MVC, another project that is heavily built around servlets. The Spring transaction handling is just an abstraction layer on top of
existing transactional mechanisms (JPA, Hibernate, JDBC or JTA) Oh, and Security? Doesn't it rely heavily on Servlets / Filters? Spring Messaging, just another wrapper around JMS and JTA with its own integration layer. Does anyone care about Java EE? Yes, Pivotal itself. Because without Java EE probably application server will stop to evolve. With the consequence that even Spring will be a dead horse.

Re: Java EE 8 in Crisis

John Wright — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 12:59:41 -0000

Does anyone care about Java EE anymore? Most developers I know rely on Spring Framework and allied Spring projects such as Spring Batch, Spring Integration etc. They may use Hibernate, jOOQ, Guava, Apache Camel, Storm, Spark etc.

Features typically make it into those projects YEARS ahead of Java EE. It's increasingly something that even large enterprise shops don't need as tick items anymore, mainly because they are competing for talent against the many startups in the big centres such as SF, London, NYC etc. The need for innovation can't wait for Oracle (and latterly Sun) to release things on a 2-3 year cycle!

Re: Contracting #20 – How to get good at handling enquiries and telephone calls?

Peter Pilgrim — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 09:16:39 -0000

Of course, experts are more than helpful answering technical questions in their respective fields. Thanks for your comment. As a client, when you hire a consultant for advice, are you testing the know-how of the contractor / consultant during the hire? If the answer is yes to the last question, then how much of the know-how do you test? At which stage of the interview / discussions stage do you test? I contend that consultants are not quite same as hiring for FTE (full time employees), so if a client is interviewing a consultant for hire in the very same that they treat candidates for employment, then that may leave a lot for desire. Obviously, the prospective consultant is not going to be impressed with "a game of 23 basic questions" on the first meet and greet. I understand that the question "how do you find the right consultant?" is a tricky one for many folk.

Re: Contracting #20 – How to get good at handling enquiries and telephone calls?

Benjamin Parker — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 05:55:07 -0000

James Gosling, Joshua Bloch and Martin Odersky are industry known experts in their field. Of course a regular Java or Scala dev wouldn't ask them such technical questions. I doubt, however they would be so worried about the prospect of such that they would write a blog post suggesting others desist from doing so.

Re: JavaOne 2014 in Depth

Peter Pilgrim — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 05:52:50 -0000

Thanks Roberto

Re: JavaOne 2014 in Depth

Roberto Cortez — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 18:40:49 -0000

Hi Peter,

Great report! Thank you for the picture :)

Re: Where Are All The Black People in IT?

J.undernet — Tue, 08 Jul 2014 09:54:32 -0000

Hi Peter,

I agree with you. "For anybody who wants to achieve anything in life, believing that you can do it is the path to success"

But the thing is "if you want", and this is the problem.

Actually it's not hard in France for a black person to have a brilliant career. The problem is the politics don't do anything to make us want to learn IT. Like you said, education is important. The situation is, in France, most of black people live in suburb, and we have bad quality education. Being a smart person in the French society is assimilated to be a kind of looser, specially in suburb. As a black and young black person, it's better for you to be assimilated to a nice Rapper than a bookwork. That's why there are few black person in IT.

More than that, in TV, when it come to TV show for young people, the message is clearly "everybody can get rich and famous being in reality show", and recently, they put a lot of people from suburb in those shows. So, again, most of the young black guys/girls want to be "one of those guys from reality show" because it's cool and fun.

There is also the problem of criminality. If a black person does something wrong, politics will say "oh, it doesn't matter, he is black and poor so we have to understand him" and they will let you go. First, and on short term effect, you think it's good, and they care about us. But it's a trap : the long term effect is doing like this, we will never learn how to be a good and smart person, we will keep staying in our bad situation because "the politics protect us".

I agree again, when you said we need to change the organization. That's what I'm trying to do. It's hard because our opponent is really powerful. But anyway, I believe someday we will reach our goal. Thank you for this this great article !

J. undernet

Re: Where Are All The Black People in IT?

Peter Pilgrim — Mon, 07 Jul 2014 14:48:44 -0000

J.undernet

Thanks for commenting on my blog article.

You point out a probable "cause" for the under-representation of black people inside industry that there is lack of role models, people who have achieved success before and are visible to other people who inspire to make a career in IT.

Much of what you say is about the current situation in France, I make the assumption. It reminds me of the state of affairs in the United Kingdom during the late 1980's, when I was growing up, on TV where the only black person you saw were entertainers, actors, sports and musicians. When I started to learn computing science, I grew up in London with no black role models in IT and, yet, I found a way to believe and achieve my dreams. For anybody who wants to achieve anything in life, believing that you can do it is the path to success; and it does not matter what colour, creed or race you are part of. Information technology in the 1990's or whenever did not have the hang-ups of law, because it was a relatively new sector. From your comments, it sounds like living and working in France right now is a difficult place to be professional and be black person. If you have the talent, and put the work into learning, applying rigorous practice then it eventually you can overcome whatever barrier organisation or people put in front you. This is the meaning behind my allegory about the Levee. Here is a free one "If the organisation won't change, change the organisation" - vote with feet, leave and find a better, or start a better one. Here is a second one, from Rita Warford, "It's easy to work for someone else; all you have to do is show up."

You feel that other people are pushing black French people back and preventing them from achieving success, then the only way to solve it is to buck the trend, go against the flow of water. After all, somebody has to make that first step over the hurdle. I do kind of agree with your frustration to a certain extent, that the bar on the track-and-field pole vault is always appears to getting higher, somebody in the system is doing it every year, or it feels like that: there are more university graduates now in 2013 then there were in 1993.

In my article, I noticed that there was under-representation of black people at a popular conference in the USA. I drew attention to the visual mode and not necessarily the reasons. The root cause can be many things, including the lack of education, the failure of the industry to attract (or keep) talent, the failure of people already inside the profession stepping out and having higher visibility, people who may have had an initial interest in IT and then but gave it up for another career, and so on. This cause list is not exhaustive. What does worry me is the possibility that senior management are not promoting the very little existing talent, which may or may not exist in organisations up the food chain. In particular, I drew a reference to the lack of high profile black directors or visible architects in such organisations.

+PP+

Re: Where Are All The Black People in IT?

J.undernet — Mon, 07 Jul 2014 05:51:13 -0000

Well ! Complicated topic. First I would say I think it's not a good thing to define yourself as a "Black IT guy", you're a good developer or not, and it doesn't depends on the colour of your skin. I mean, when it comes to hire someone, the first criteria has to be skills (IT skills, Relational skills ...) and not ethnicity. I would feel bad if a company hires me just because I'm black, instead of someone else who is little bit better than me for example.

It interesting what you are pointing out on your article, but I think you focus on the effect and not on the cause. I live in France, so I'll talk about what is happening there.

In France, we don't have good example for black person. When you see black people in TV, most of the time they are just dancing, singing or doing stupid things. It's not a good example for the young blacks.

You will rarely see a black person talking about programming, or writing a nice book, or something intellectual. When the politics come to our suburb, where most of black people are, they just say like "guys, you should lean how to dance, and sing or play football, maybe you can be the next snoop dog or the next Zidane". The truth is, for 1000 persons , only one would make his career this way. So it's not a good idea out push black people in "show business" direction : few will success. They say they are not racists but they keep pushing us into what they say is good for us.

If we want more black people in IT, we should provide more example of black successful people.

Re: Contractor Rates Don’t Track With Inflation

Peter Pilgrim — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 14:05:27 -0000

And so the conclusion is this is the end of contracting, because it is not sustainable, as the cost of living is going to increase therefore there is no incentive to take the risk. It also spells doom for permanent people, because the salaries on average are not keeping with the CPI and therefore inflation. My conclusion drawn from the facts here is that we should potentially look for another job other than developing software, because rewards in the long run are not worth the effort.

Re: Contractor Rates Don’t Track With Inflation

Roberto Cortez — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 12:55:54 -0000

This is a very interesting post. Bad news for contractors and unfortunately this is not likely to change.

Re: Staying Alive with Atlassian Stash

Peter Pilgrim — Tue, 20 May 2014 04:46:04 -0000

Actually, I had the keepalive setting only for the proxy -> backend connection as a first step. I will file a ticket with the support team. Thanks Stefan for getting back to me.

Re: Getting a more updated GlassFish 4

Peter Pilgrim — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 15:09:33 -0000

Hi David

I just went there https://glassfish.java.net/...
Will there be downloadable distributions in the work in progress tab pane?

Re: Getting a more updated GlassFish 4

David Delabassee — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 08:34:49 -0000

Or just hit the "Work in progress" tab on the Download page (see https://glassfish.java.net/...

Re: #ITMustChange2014 – Market Risk Role Java Job Question 2011

Peter Pilgrim — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 07:50:42 -0000

Thanks Roberto for your opinion and your support. You are very kind: birds of a feather flock together.

Re: #ITMustChange2014 – Market Risk Role Java Job Question 2011

Roberto Cortez — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 07:13:23 -0000

I have to say that I'm totally in sync with your post. Well done!