thejavajar

So as 2008 comes to a close, I want to reflect on the past year and what I am expecting/looking forward to in 2009. Professionally and personally, I have gained some great experience.

On a professional level, I have experienced a lot of different technologies that have given me a wider, open view when it comes to providing IT solutions. I started 2008 ready to throw Java at almost every development problem I encountered. Now with some experience with Flex/ActionScript, Python, Groovy/Grails and Ruby/Rails, I have realized that I should not look to solve everything with Java unless it is a best fit solution for the problem. I still love Java for many applicable purposes but I have come to the realization that polyglot programming is among us and will grow in popularity in 2009. I still love the Java enterprise stack and I really, really love what SpringSource is doing to ease the overall complexity that shadows enterprise Java.

Personally, I have matured a bit. I realize that people are going to have opinions about technology that I may never understand. What I have come to understand is that their experience has led them to that opinion, good or bad, and I should at least respect that they have an opinion.

I am looking forward to 2009 for many reasons. I am sure the road ahead will not be smooth but I anticipate 2009 being a year that will be worth the bumpy ride. As long as we put down a good foundation, we should be able to re-build what we have lost. To my colleagues/friends: Happy New Year and may 2009 be a prosperous year.

The other night, I followed the directions posted here and successfully installed and configured Ubuntu 8.10 on my MacBook Pro. I wanted OS X and Ubuntu as options at startup but I could have just installed Ubuntu or made it a trifecta with OS X, Ubuntu and Windows as options at startup.

It is a pretty simple process: Use OS X’s BootCamp utilitiy to create a partition on your hard drive. I created a 30 GB partition which is plenty of space for now. Then, install rEFIt. Next, boot from the Ubuntu 8.10 disc. At startup, with rEFFIt, you can choose to boot OS X or from the Ubuntu CD. Once running on the Ubuntu LIVECD, use gparted to delete the partition that you just created. Finally, start the Ubuntu installer from the Desktop icon and select to install on the “largest continuous free space”. On the last screen of the installer, click the advanced button and choose to install grub to “/dev/sda3″.

I like Ubuntu running on my MacBook Pro. There a few things that I needed to setup that made running Ubuntu feel like OS X. A few things I first noticed and fixed with a few Google searches: 2 finger scrolling, right-click and closing the laptop lid for hibernate/sleep mode.

I recently took the time to install and work with the Grails plugin, GrailsUI. It provides a great tag library that is based on YUI and the Bubbling library, a YUI extension. I really like the components that are available and if you need that rich Ajax feel in your Grails application, this is a low impedance path to get things done. So, in order to get your Grails project up and running with GrailsUI, you need to install all 3 plugins in this order:

...
> grails install-plugin yui
> grails install-plugin bubbling
> grails install-plugin grails-ui
...

At first, I just started adding some of the static components to the index.gsp page and then moved on to wiring the rich Ajax components to controllers. If you follow the code snippets on the GrailsUI plugin page or if you check out the guiDemo Grails project, you should have very little problem understanding the core components and their attributes. Grails with GrailsUI can get your next Web application up and running with a very popular UI technology and the learning curve is not too steep if you first check out the guiDemo on the GrailsUI plugin page.

I found this site this evening and I thought it was something worth writing about. It is a great tool for developers or analysts. Go check out http://www.websequencediagrams.com and experience an incredible tool for creating sequence diagrams in your browser.