Eclipse, Shared Heap, and You ( and that guy over there )

So I have been thinking about how to incorporate Terracotta into the applications that I work on at my job for a while and so far we have come up with some good ideas as to how to leverage the Distributed Shared Objects ( or DSOs ), but it occurred to me today that there is something really, really cool that could be done with DSOs and Eclipse in a team/pair programming situation.

Maybe you see where I am going with this, maybe not. But here it is. Create an Eclipse plug-in or extension that bootstraps the Eclipse editor classes so that we can make them shared objects in the Terracotta shared heap space.

I'll let that sink in for a second...

Ok, so now all you XP aficionados can take your pair-programming to a new level without the need for fancy pair-programming stations. Have the Eclipse editor classes shared in the heap, so when developer A starts writing code on workstation X, developer B can see the changes in his Eclipse on workstation Y. To start this up, developer A would just need to have the Terracotta server running on workstation X and the developer B would need to point his Eclipse at the Terracotta server running on workstation A. Then kablammo! A shared editing environment for free.

A sample of how this works can be seen with the samples that come with Terracotta, specifically the "Shared Graphics Editor" that they ship with the download. In playing around with the graphics editor you can see that as changes are made in instance 1 of the editor they appear in instance 2 which can be running on a separate machine, while the Terracotta server is running on the same box as instance 1.

I think I am going to venture into the world of Eclipse plug-ins to see if I can get a working example of this. I want to know what others think of this. Leave a comment and let me know if you would be interested in seeing something like this.

Rails Training Cont.

So the Rails training that I was in went really well. I think that for anyone who is considering getting into the world of Rails would benefit from a class like this one. However, if you have been using Rails for a little while and have been reading through Agile Web Development with Rails, there will be little benefit from a class like this. Pretty much everything in the first 10 chapters of the book is covered, so if you have gone through that you may not want to take a class like this. On the other hand it was cool to hear from someone who has been using rails for a while to see what tools and plugins they use to work on their projects.

For example:

• ZenTest - awesome continuous integration tool.
• redgreen - some fluff for the output of ZenTest.
• rcov - amazing code coverage tool.
  

These were just some of the things that Brandon talked about that I am already using in my project. I think there is a lot to be said about attending a class. Sometimes its not so much the language or the framework that you really get out of a training class as it is the real world experience and tips from someone who knows what he is talking about.


Go write some code!!!

Ruby On Rails

So, I have been playing around with Rails for a few weeks now and I must say that this is probably the happiest I have ever been. Writing simple clean code that just makes sense and works is awesome! Models that have the data access in them, awesome! Controllers that just control and map to a view, awesome! I could go on and on and on about how much I love this language. Java is solid, but Rails is easy, fast and simple. I could write about something in particular, but at this point in time there isn't much that I could say that someone else hasn't said.

I need to start looking into the unit testing side of things for Rails. I know that there is some info on Ruby unit testing in the pickaxe book and there is some testing info in the agile web dev book ( both from pragmatic programmers ). These are some of the best books ever. I must say that everything that I have read that has 'David Thomas' on the cover has been just awesome.

If there is anyone reading this, which at this point there is no one, feel free to comment on this topic.


Also, if you are writing a fB app like everyone else in the world and are using Rails you have to check out rFacebook. Seriously, this makes the whole process of getting up and running, writing a facebook app stupid simple... a couple of lines of code and kablammo! you are off to the races... Start writing the next stupid app that gets bought by some big corporation for millions only because they aren't agile enough to write their own!!!!! Crazy! Seriously!


Go write some code... OUT!