Monday, April 25, 2011

Posts of Particular Interest: Java and JavaOne, PHP, PowerShell,

In this post, I reference and briefly some posts of particular interest to me in recent weeks. Posts referenced here cover topics such as Java (JavaOne, JMX, Java Memory), PHP, and PowerShell.


Top Java Memory Problems

Michael Kopp's The Top Java Memory Problems – Part 1 provides a nice overview of common memory issues in Java applications. Specifically, he covers memory leaks related to thread local variables, mutable static fields and collections, circular/bi-directional references, JNI, improper equals/hashCode implementations, and classloaders.


Three Free E-books on Beginning Java (and Five on PHP)

Klint Finley's post 3 Free E-Books on Java for Beginners references three freely available e-books about Java. I was already aware of Bruce Eckel's Thinking in Java (as usual, he offers the second newest edition free of charge), but he also mentions How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Java Edition and Introduction to Programming in Java.

In a related post called 5 Free E-Books and Tutorials for Learning PHP, Finley outlines five freely available PHP resources. As I recently posted, I have plans to start learning and working with PHP, so this post interests me.


Best JVM Replacement Language is Java? (and the Play Framework)

In the post And the best JVM replacement language for Java is: Java?, Mark Watson talks about some of the strengths of Java and discusses things he does "to make Java more agile." He also mentions early satisfaction with the Play framework. In one of the feedback comments on this post, Steven states, "I had to leave Java for the Rails-type frameworks because of the productivity gains. I have to say that with Play! you get the best of both worlds."


Accessing JMX on the Web with Jolokia

In the post Jolokia + Highcharts = JMX for human beings, Tomasz Nurkiewicz writes about using Jolokia ("HTTP/JSON bridge for remote JMX access") in conjunction with Highcharts ("free for noncommercial") to display JMX-provided JVM metrics in a web browser application. There are generic tools such as VisualVM and JConsole that can do some of this, but the flexibility and customizability of an approach like that demonstrated by Nurkiewicz can provide significant advantages in certain situations.


Actors and GPars

Vaclav Pech's Dr. Dobb's Journal article JVM Concurrency and Actors with GPars discusses how GPars (Groovy Parallel Systems) allows actors to be used on the JVM to simulate continuations. As Pech demonstrates this, he also covers highly-related topics such as basics of the actor model, an introduction to GPars for use in Groovy or Java or any JVM language, and lists other features provided by GPars.


PowerShell Language Licensed Under the Community Promise

The Windows PowerShell Blog post PowerShell Language now licensed under the Community Promise states:
The PowerShell team is excited to announce that starting today we are licensing the language specification for Windows PowerShell 2.0 under the Microsoft Community Promise. This means that now anyone can implement PowerShell on any platform they want to.
The specification is available for free download as a docx file.


JavaOne 2011 Formally Announced

There were multiple posts on JavaOne 2011's formal announcement. The JavaOne 2011 post in The Java Source blog and the JavaOne Conference Blog post JavaOne 2011 - October 2nd to 6th in San Francisco confirm that JavaOne 2011 will be held October 2-6, 2011, in San Francisco. This announcement also headlines the DZone Daily Dose and is featured in Java.net's "Spotlights" section.


Conclusion

There's much going on in the world of software development in general and the world of JVM development in particular. The posts I cited above are evidence of this and it is particularly exciting to see fresh new posts on subjects such as JMX, JVM actors with GPars, in-depth coverage of Java memory issues, and so forth.

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