Panasonic Youth rob sanheim writes about software, business, ruby, music, stuff and things

How to write good error messages

An anonymous javaBlogger posted about crummy error messages in many common frameworks today. His complaint was with messages like this:

Wrong string format
Cannot open file
Unable to contact server

And proprosed changing them to include the offending input:

Wrong string format in state code: “WI_1234″
Cannot open file: my.settings
Unable to contact server: your.mom.com

I would say go even further. [...]

When will JavaLobby get a working message board?

You know, I’d like to read discussions like this one, but its pretty much pointless if you have to click on each and every of the 80-some messages to try and follow the conversation. There are a ton of free open source message board systems out there, and I know I’ve read other people [...]

JRuby session at Javaone 2006

Its pretty exciting to see a JRuby talk accepted at JavaOne 2006. At least someone at Sun gets it about alternative dynamic languages on the JVM. This is at least one good reason to stick around after the Ajax Experience for JavaOne.
This part of the abstract is particularily compelling:
We plan for JRuby to [...]

Looks like Google should’ve used BigDecimal!

But Yahoo search has it right…

Two points for Eclipse

Mathias wrote about why he is switching to IDEA. From talking with IDEA users and watching demos at conferences, its obvious that IDEA has the polish and finish that Eclipse + web tools + duct tape doesn’t.
However, Eclipse has two key points going for it that keep me loyal:

Eclipse has dominant market [...]

Eclipse tip: always save automatically to stay in the flow

I almost never want to be asked if I want to save an editor window in Eclipse. With the safeguards of version control and local history, there is never a save that cannot be reverted easily. When I’m really in the flow, I want the cycle to be seamless between edit test case, [...]

Naming test objects - mock, stub, fake?

consistent names for “test doubles”

Getting size of collection in JSTL 1.0

Assuming JSTL 1.0, this doesn’t work:
<c:out value=”${myMap.size}” />
and neither does this
<c:set var=”mapSize” value=”${myMap.size}” />
<c: out value=”${mapSize}” />
I’m assuming JSTL wants to find something called getSize()…
So is this the only way to do it?
<%=((java.util.Map) pageContext.findAttribute(”myMap”)).size() %>
(meta note: if I actually get all the HTML escape codes right for this, I will be amazed)

Buncha links for Friday - techie and otherwise

Nerdy

Ruby on Rails cheatsheet, done very nicely as always from ILoveJackDaniels
An idea on test invariants in TDD - basically a way to enforce design by contract using typical TDD + java/C# only - from Martin Fowler.
How Ajax reduced load on MacRumors.com during Jobs presentation on Ajaxian.
Bambi Meets Godzilla - anti-anti-hype and Ruby vs Python

Not nerdy

Hindsights [...]

How to annoy and aggravate your coworkers with CVS!

“Whats the problem?! It compiles, doesn’t it!!”