Category Archives: Java

Storing Git repositories in Amazon S3 for high availability

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Todd Huss

At VolunteerMatch we’re experimenting with using Chef Solo to manage Amazon EC2 servers. The catch is that if a server is going to rely on Chef to boot up, then the Chef Recipes (which we’re storing in a Git Repository) … Continue reading →

Posted in Cloud Computing, Java, Linux, Source Control, Systems Administration | 2 Comments

Acceptance Testing non Ruby web applications with Cucumber

Posted on October 26, 2010 by Todd Huss

If you’re looking for the sample Standalone Cucumber Test Suite to get you started testing non Ruby based applications with Cucumber, here’s the source: http://github.com/thuss/standalone-cucumber. Sometimes you inherit a non Ruby based web app written in PHP, Perl, Java, C#, … Continue reading →

Posted in Continuous Integration, Java, Quality Assurance, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Testing, Web | 1 Comment

Code readability through conciseness

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Todd Huss

One of the things I love about newer languages like Ruby and Scala (and to a degree Python and Groovy) are the language features that allow you to dial conciseness up or down for readability. Take for instance the typical … Continue reading →

Posted in Java, Ruby, Scala, Software Engineering | 8 Comments

Selenium Continuous Integration Runner

Posted on January 10, 2009 by Todd Huss

At Common Sense Media I wanted to get some functional testing up and running that didn’t require a lot of user training for the QA folks. I also wanted those tests to run in our Rightscale/Amazon EC2 hosted Hudson continuous … Continue reading →

Posted in Agile Development, Continuous Integration, Java, Javascript, Quality Assurance, Software Engineering, Testing | 4 Comments

Standalone Migrations: Using Rails migrations in non Rails projects

Posted on December 22, 2008 by Todd Huss

Update 8/7/2010: Standalone migrations is now a gem (sudo gem install standalone_migrations) so disregard the outdated installation instructions below Update 7/8/2009: With the latest batch of contributed patches standalone migrations now works just like Rails migrations Update 12/26/2008: I switched … Continue reading →

Posted in Database, Java, Linux, MySQL, Ruby, Ruby on Rails | 5 Comments

Moving to 64 bit Ubuntu

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Todd Huss

After 3 Ubuntu upgrades on my primary workhorse (a Lenovo Thinkpad z61t) I decided it was time for a fresh install to remove all the cruft. In the past I’ve always used 32 bit Ubuntu (even though my laptop is … Continue reading →

Posted in Desktop, Java, Linux | 1 Comment

An interview with the authors of JRuby

Posted on January 22, 2007 by Todd Huss

The Java Posse hosted a great podcast interview with the authors of JRuby: Charles Nutter and Thomas Enebo. Additionally you get to hear what Tor Norbye is up to with his work on NetBeans Ruby integration and it looks like … Continue reading →

Posted in Java, Ruby, Software Engineering | Comments Off

Tab completion and history with irb and script/console

Posted on December 6, 2006 by Todd Huss

One thing I love about Ruby (and really miss when working in Java) is its interactive command line interpreter irb (or script/console if you’re using Rails). I really wish irb had tab completion and saved history configured by default out … Continue reading →

Posted in Java, Ruby, Software Engineering | 3 Comments

Instantiating and populating a list or collection

Posted on November 20, 2006 by Todd Huss

In Java it always irks me when I have to create a collection and then populate it in separate steps as follows: List states = new ArrayList(); state.add(State.CA); state.add(State.WY); Then today I read about using an anonymous subclass with instance … Continue reading →

Posted in Java, Ruby, Software Engineering | 12 Comments

Upgrading to Spring 2.0 and Hibernate 3.2

Posted on October 19, 2006 by Todd Huss

Tonight I just completed the upgrade from Spring 1.2 and Hibernate 3.1 to Spring 2.0 and Hibernate 3.2 for work. I was expecting a rough upgrade but was pleasantly surprised how easily it went.

Posted in Database, Java, Software Engineering | 3 Comments