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