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Pimp My Emacs Post 1

Jeff — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:48:47 +0000

I’ve been moving back to emacs, the editor of my youth.

I’m not a vehement emacs evangelical, and I don’t really hate eclipse. But I’m moving back for rational reasons. Basically, I just don’t like to wait to write code.

At my current client, I have a slow machine. This isn’t uncommon for consultants. It’s absolutely the dumbest thing in the world for a company to do- give their developers underpowered machines. It’s amazing how often it happens, but it’s a fact of life. My system has 2 GB of RAM. Once I have Eclipse, Hsqldb, the Rest server and web server all running I’m basically out of memory. Add all the utility apps and it’s completely spent.

Of course the number one use of memory on my system is Eclipse.

To really switch from eclipse though, emacs will have to do a lot.

For right now, I just wanted to add a mention of my new favorite mode in emacs- org mode.

I’m still a long way from using this effectively- I don’t have the keys memorized, and I still mostly use my dry erase board and notebook instead of jumping to org-mode right away. In short, it’s not ingrained as a habit yet.

One thing I’ve done with it that I am happy with, is that I save my org files to my DropBox, so I can keep my org files synchronized across computers. DropBox is a really slick app- and has clients for all platforms!

Grails and HtmlUnit

Jeff — Sat, 09 May 2009 18:56:14 +0000

I was struggling to add HtmlUnit to Grails to do some testing when I came upon this.

The solution was to remove the HtmlUnit included jar, xml-apis-1.3.04.

The error looked like this:

loader constraint violation: loader (instance of &lt;bootloader&gt;) previously initiated loading for a different type with name "org/w3c/dom/NamedNodeMap"
java.lang.LinkageError: loader constraint violation: loader (instance of ) previously initiated loading for a different type with name "org/w3c/dom/NamedNodeMap"
at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethods0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredMethods(Class.java:2427)
at java.lang.Class.getMethod0(Class.java:2670)
at java.lang.Class.getMethod(Class.java:1603)
at net.sourceforge.htmlunit.corejs.javascript.ContextFactory.isDom3Present(ContextFactory.java:301)
at net.sourceforge.htmlunit.corejs.javascript.ContextFactory.getE4xImplementationFactory(ContextFactory.java:328)
at net.sourceforge.htmlunit.corejs.javascript.Context.getE4xImplementationFactory(Context.java:2175)
at net.sourceforge.htmlunit.corejs.javascript.ScriptRuntime.initStandardObjects(ScriptRuntime.java:222)
at net.sourceforge.htmlunit.corejs.javascript.Context.initStandardObjects(Context.java:1069)
at net.sourceforge.htmlunit.corejs.javascript.Context.initStandardObjects(Context.java:1036)
at com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.javascript.JavaScriptEngine.init(JavaScriptEngine.java:157)
at com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.javascript.JavaScriptEngine.access$000(JavaScriptEngine.java:68)
at com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.javascript.JavaScriptEngine$1.run(JavaScriptEngine.java:130)
at net.sourceforge.htmlunit.corejs.javascript.Context.call(Context.java:515)
at net.sourceforge.htmlunit.corejs.javascript.ContextFactory.call(ContextFactory.java:507)
at com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.javascript.JavaScriptEngine.initialize(JavaScriptEngine.java:141)
at com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.WebClient.initialize(WebClient.java:1107)
at com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.WebWindowImpl.setEnclosedPage(WebWindowImpl.java:99)
at com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.html.HTMLParser.parse(HTMLParser.java:268)
at com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultPageCreator.createHtmlPage(DefaultPageCreator.java:127)
at com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.DefaultPageCreator.createPage(DefaultPageCreator.java:101)
at com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.WebClient.loadWebResponseInto(WebClient.java:442)
at com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.WebClient.getPage(WebClient.java:329)
at com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.WebClient.getPage(WebClient.java:386)
at com.gargoylesoftware.htmlunit.WebClient.getPage(WebClient.java:371)
at UIUnitTests.setUp(UIUnitTests.groovy:12)
at _GrailsTest_groovy$_run_closure4.doCall(_GrailsTest_groovy:202)
at _GrailsTest_groovy$_run_closure2.doCall(_GrailsTest_groovy:146)
at _GrailsTest_groovy$_run_closure1_closure19.doCall(_GrailsTest_groovy:112)
at _GrailsTest_groovy$_run_closure1.doCall(_GrailsTest_groovy:95)
at TestApp$_run_closure1.doCall(TestApp:66)
at gant.Gant$_dispatch_closure4.doCall(Gant.groovy:324)
at gant.Gant$_dispatch_closure6.doCall(Gant.groovy:334)
at gant.Gant$_dispatch_closure6.doCall(Gant.groovy)
at gant.Gant.withBuildListeners(Gant.groovy:344)
at gant.Gant.this$2$withBuildListeners(Gant.groovy)
at gant.Gant$this$2$withBuildListeners.callCurrent(Unknown Source)
at gant.Gant.dispatch(Gant.groovy:334)
at gant.Gant.this$2$dispatch(Gant.groovy)
at gant.Gant.invokeMethod(Gant.groovy)
at gant.Gant.processTargets(Gant.groovy:495)
at gant.Gant.processTargets(Gant.groovy:480)

Grails Multiple Datasource Plugin

Jeff — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:34:39 +0000

Burt Beckwith discusses his new plugin – one I’ve been needing for a while!

A Good Article on Agile Development

Jeff — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:03:56 +0000

Jonathan Harley writes, Agile development is a good way to minimize risks.

(As an aside: the key difference between [agile and iterative development] then is as follows: in stage-based project management one person, usually the project manager rather than the business representative, is tasked with identifying risks to the project, based on the assumptions that the project has been specified correctly and completely, and that all business policies available to him/her are complete, accurate and fully up-to-date at all times. Software industry research has now shown that these are poor assumptions. What‘s more, by delivering something recognizable as a usable product early on, it becomes possible for a much wider range of people in the business to understand what is being done in terms of business value and suggest improvements to the specification at an early stage, improving quality and reducing many kinds of risk, including failure, relevance, inappropriate architecture etc. etc.)

This describes my previous employer perfectly. The mindset of organizational tiers and responsibility barriers made anything but this stage-based approach impossible. Great article.

Gmail Tip

Jeff — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:51:15 +0000

I read this today; I didn’t know you could manipulate gmail addresses in such a way.

Install multiple IE (IE4, IE5, IE5.5, IE6) as a standalone for testing

Priyatam — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:19:20 +0000

Although, most UI Javascript frameworks say that their script “works” in all browsers, it’s quite the opposite. As a developer, you might wanna save your ass till a last moment surprise. And you would want to test your web application or website on all web browsers, atleast for a sanity test. Typically this involves IE 5.x and IE6.x and maybe IE7, Firefox. (Apparently, nobody cares for Safari, even though it’s my favourite browser). However if you already have the latest upgrade of IE 7 or IE 6 SP2 installedÂ from yourÂ Corporate Infrastructure group, installing multiple IE versions on your PC is not as easy as it sounds to be, thanks to Windows DLL Hell. The good news is, there’s a way to hack around it, by exploiting a known workaround called DLL redirection. Honestly, I’m not interested in the details on howÂ they’ve done it and I’m sure you’re not either.

So here is the magical one click installer Tool, which installs all the versions as a “standalone” browser(s).Â Or, if you want them from another source, which has them archived, here it is. Â

In fact it goes all the way to IE 3.0! (Don’t even try to test on IE3, my app crapped the shit outta it)

Manage Eclipse Plugins with Pulse

Jeff — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:48:07 +0000

I’ve heard some good reviews about Pulse.

Identifight

Jeff — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:29:41 +0000

Interesting website that will search for a given email address on a number of common webapps that expose email addresses via public APIs.

Write a single class to generate a full blown webapp — another webapp?

Priyatam — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:16:45 +0000

Write one pojo class as your domain model and you get a full blown application with CRUD, UI pages, in built search, report generation, portlets etc. No more xmls, no more code generation. No Maven.

What are we talking about?

Too good to believe but the folks at OpenXava 3.0 seem to take a huge leap towards webapp development, it’s worth a look.