How to Debug Your Maven Build with Eclipse

When running a Maven build with many plugins (e.g. the jOOQ or Flyway plugins), you may want to have a closer look under the hood to see what's going on internally in those plugins, or in your extensions of those plugins. This may not appear obvious when you're running Maven from the command line, e.g. … Continue reading How to Debug Your Maven Build with Eclipse

Use This Preference to Speed up Your Eclipse m2e Configuration

Who doesn't know them. The good old JFace dialogs in Eclipse that give you a visual representation of what is really a rather simple XML or properties file. In the case of m2e, it looks like this: Unfortunately, this screen is a bit slow to load, and it doesn't offer much value beyond checking version … Continue reading Use This Preference to Speed up Your Eclipse m2e Configuration

Is Your Eclipse Running a Bit Slow? Just Use This Simple Trick!

You wouldn't believe it until you try it yourself. I've been using the Eclipse Mars developer milestones lately, and I've been having some issues with slow compilation. I always thought it was because of the m2e integration, which has never been famous for working perfectly. But then, it dawned upon me when I added a … Continue reading Is Your Eclipse Running a Bit Slow? Just Use This Simple Trick!

One Year After Java 8’s Release, IDEs and Compilers are not Fully Ready Yet

One year ago, on March 18, 2014, Java SE 8 was released, and with it, the bliss of functional programming through lambda expressions and the streams API. These were great news for all of our Java ecosystem, and many people have already upgraded to Java 8. Stack Overflow already yields almost 2500 questions about Java … Continue reading One Year After Java 8’s Release, IDEs and Compilers are not Fully Ready Yet

Top 10 Very Very VERY Important Topics to Discuss

Some things are just very very very VERY very important. Such as John Cleese. The same is true for Whitespace: Whitespace-Shedding Yes. 1080 Reddit Karma points (so urgently needed!) in only 23 hours. That's several orders of magnitudes better than any of our - what we wrongfully thought to be - very deep and interesting … Continue reading Top 10 Very Very VERY Important Topics to Discuss

The Top 10 Productivity Booster Techs for Programmers

This is the list we've all been waiting for. The top 10 productivity booster techs for programmers that - once you've started using them - you can never do without them any longer. Here it is: 1. Git Before, there were various version control systems. Better ones, worse ones. But somehow they all felt wrong … Continue reading The Top 10 Productivity Booster Techs for Programmers

Top 5 Useful Hidden Eclipse Features

Eclipse is a beast. A device whose mystery is only exceeded by its power. Some would call it a continuum transfunctioner. Others would call it a transmogrifier. Yes, it is so huge, it takes years to master. And then, your manager shows up and tells you: We're using NetBeans now. Just kidding. No one uses … Continue reading Top 5 Useful Hidden Eclipse Features

Eclipse’s Awesome Block Selection Mode

This post is about an awesome Eclipse feature, that is completely underestimated and hidden in the menu. Yet, it is so useful in so many situations. The awesome "Block Selection Mode" which can be toggled through Alt-Shift-A on Windows. Here's an example challenge for the Block Selection Mode: Is there any way I can write … Continue reading Eclipse’s Awesome Block Selection Mode

Nice Tutorial for Creating an External DSL with Xtext

When blogging about DSLs, I'm mostly blogging about internal domain-specific languages, because jOOQ is a good example for internal DSLs. But external domain-specific languages are an interesting topic as well. As an external DSL does not depend on any host language (e.g. Java), it can be much richer in syntax and expressivity. On the other … Continue reading Nice Tutorial for Creating an External DSL with Xtext

JDEclipse: A must-have Java Decompiler

I have recently discovered this new, must-have Eclipse plugin, which is very useful for those third-party libraries whose source-code you can't easily find or link into your Eclipse: JDEclipse. It doesn't only decompile byte code into Java code, it does so extremely well, keeping line numbers at the correct place, such that you can actually … Continue reading JDEclipse: A must-have Java Decompiler