A Curious Java Language Feature and How it Produced a Subtle Bug

Java's visibility rules are tricky at times. Do you know what this will print? package p; import static p.A.x; class A { static String x = "A.x"; } class B { String x = "B.x"; } class C { String x = "C.x"; class D extends B { void m() { System.out.println(x); } } } … Continue reading A Curious Java Language Feature and How it Produced a Subtle Bug

A Beginner’s Guide to the True Order of SQL Operations

The SQL language is very intuitive. Until it isn't. Over the years, a lot of people have criticised the SQL language for a variety of reasons. For instance: IDEs cannot easily guess what auto completion options to offer, because as long as you don't specify the FROM clause, there are no tables in scope (yet): … Continue reading A Beginner’s Guide to the True Order of SQL Operations

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Java

So, you've been working with Java since the very beginning? Remember the days when it was called "Oak", when OO was still a hot topic, when C++ folks thought that Java had no chance, when Applets were still a thing? I bet that you didn't know at least half of the following things. Let's start … Continue reading 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Java

Top 10 Ceylon Language Features I Wish We Had In Java

What does one do when Hibernate is "finished" and feature complete and one needs new challenges? Right. One creates a new JVM language called Ceylon. On November 12, 2013, Ceylon 1.0.0 was finally released and we congratulate the whole team at Red Hat for their achievements in what looks like a very promising new JVM … Continue reading Top 10 Ceylon Language Features I Wish We Had In Java

Java, if this were a better world

Just a little dreaming about a better world, where some old blunders in the Java platform would've been corrected and some awesome missing features would've been implemented. Don't get me wrong. I think Java is awesome. But it still has some issues, like any other platform. Without any particular order, without claiming to be anything … Continue reading Java, if this were a better world

A very refreshing point of view about language design

Have fun: http://joshondesign.com/2012/03/09/open-letter-language-designers