David Brown - Software Engineering category

Will somebody create the IDE that does not suck?

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:49:00 GMT

My nightmare with the use of so-called IDEs (Interactive Development Editor/Enviroment) has come full circle.
I started out some years ago with my first IDE which was like a lot of folks the Eclipse software development tool.
After getting sick-to-death of IBM and WAS (Websphere) and WSAD and RAD 7 and the whole EJB gamut started by Sun Microsystems I switched from Eclipse to Netbeans and Grails. Grails is somewhat bullet-proof as it is 100% command-line driven. I appreciated Netbeans by not requiring the creation of a so-called Netbeans project or even having to import existing Grails projects so the NB IDE could get-control-of-your-project! Netbeans automagically recognizes an existing Grails project in the directory and file browser supplied with Netbeans.
This morning I was presented with a Netbeans upgrade dialog. I feared not because Netbeans had been so reasonable so far in my use of the IDE on all of my Grails project. So, figured why not? The biggest mistake I have made with my development lately is relying on updates of any kind and especially those updates the directly affect my project. Yes, my Grails app is OK only because the Grails developers were smart enough to keep the Grails development machinery on the command-line and thereby not allowing a lot of crap creeping into their development works.
Now, I'm looking a Jetbrains' IDEA I paid $250.00 for a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago I acquired the Jebrains' so-called IDEA and immediately upon launch the highly touted IDE blew-up in my face and crashed.
When I navigate to the various mailing-lists, wikis, forums and chatrooms with my questions about these so-called IDEs all I get is silence or some type of response with the sole intent of aggravating you even more about your situation.
The question remains: if Grails was able to fix CRUD style web dev by removing the idiotically endless configuration of monsters like (shudder) Struts and other XML config oriented MVCs why has not somebody stepped up and developed the IDE that does not suck like Grails does not suck when it comes to tools that perfectly build CRUD web pages?

Java Puzzler #1

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:25:00 GMT

Found on: mindlikeasword.com

Search for the webmail MUA

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:17:00 GMT

Two weeks ago or thereabouts I was struck with a very slow Usermin webmail client. I suspect the issue with the my webmail client is there are too many directories.
I have spent several days on a lot of these web-mail projects most of which are ancient. I tried a couple of Java webmail clients but either the project admin/owners were arrogant asses or the project software had no hope of running on my system.
The up-side to everything today was the fact that I was able to clone nullwebmail via my Netbeans IDE and make some diagnostic edits. And, I successfully performed a hg outgoing and hg push using the ssh:// protocol URL in my Cygwin terminal. And, the hgwebdir confirmed all changes as pushed to the remote Linux box. But to my surprise when I opened the file: src/webmail/main.c I discovered their where no changes!?
I sent an email to the Mercurial folks but their SMTPd has a habit of delaying mail. Matt Mackall and company are not very friendly albeit they are running a so-called FOSS project. I admit that I like hg much better than SVN, CVS, PVCS or SCCS. But, getting help is another question.

Mercurial - a good SCM?

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:09:00 GMT

This entry is about, in particular, a SCM (sourcecode control management) system and in general this is about a FOSS (so-called Free Open Source Software).
I was in the mood to flame this software and the author but once I had gotten the hang of the Mercurial (hg) command set and I was able to initialize and clone the c_icap source code my original fears dissipated.
I followed the Mercurial doco very closely and I read all of the doco that I could find. A lot of the doco reading was redundant and found at different locations but it was worth it because it saved me from installing the svn daemon and wrestling with that software.
The concept of a truly distributed SCM is really growing on me. And, as a novice Mercurial (hg) user I found that it was easy to make mistakes and fix them too which is not something that can be said about: svn and cvs.
The fact that I have my own local repository that was cloned from the parent repository is very much a unique idea and the overall mainenance of the repositories seems much easier that with Subversion and CVS.
Though I followed the doco as stated in a couple of bullets up I was able to clone a repository from my remote machine using the Netbeans Mercurial plugin. Simply, I just cut and pasted the URL generated in the browser using the Mercurial hgwebdir.cgi python script of my repository (browse button output).
The clone repository was easily set-up by the Netbeans/Mercurial plugin as a Netbeans project. The source does not build correctly on cygwin but I'm still better off than when I was using VIM. At least now I can use the call stack to see what functions call other functions.

January catchup entry

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:00:00 GMT

This entry is post dated to back-fill the gaps in the monthly entries for '08 and '09 (see Dec '08).
I got the big RIF today from First American. In hindsight I knew it was coming and also in hindsight I now see all the extra activities I was doing at the request of the Systems' folks was an effort to justify my position but alas it did not prevail.
In addition to losing the mem sticks and the HDD I was hit with a trojan browser hijacking virus.
This piece-of-crap virus took a week and a lot of effort to rid the machine (local Windows box) of this pestilence.
As a result I have discovered TrendMicro does a poor job of real-time virus catching. I had to resort to TrendMicro hijackthis program to root out the culprits. I also found out the TrendMicro (nor anyother tool) will delete this type of virus. The virus is so nasty as to accomplish some type of unbreakable file permissions. The file permissions are unbreakable at least in terms of Windows tools.
At last I was able to delete the undeletable virus .DLLs by downloading and burning the sysresccd.org bootable Linux CD. The Linux CD boots up and then allows the user to mount the target disk partition and filesystem and viola! the good ol' /bin/rm works like a charm!
As a result I wound up installing Squid to help fend off the browser hijack attacks and if there is anything positive from this nasty virus attack is I am not able to re-direct my unsecured Pebble blog traffic to: http://www.davidwbrown.name/pebble without having to use the 8080 port. Additionally, I have installed ClamAV and if I can get the Samba module to work I will be able to drop TrendMicro.