Weiqi Gao's Observations - jnb tag

Software Engineering Tech Trend (SETT): Experiments With JavaFX 3D Scenes

Wed, 02 May 2012 03:28:20 GMT

The last article I wrote for OCI's online newsletter Java News Brief (JNB) was Six JDK Classes You Think You Know, which several readers have told me was fun. That was the last article in the JNB series. The following month, the series began its publication under the new name Software Engineering Tech Trend (SETT), with an expanded scope covering a broader array of software engineering topics. Here's a sample of the articles that was published in SETT in the last year and a half:

In this months SETT article, Experiments With JavaFX 3D Scenes, I show you one aspect of JavaFX, its 3D scenes support, through a set of experiments that go from simple animated squares moving along straight lines to an animated formation of a tetrahedron in 3D. I was hoping to show you an animation of a dodecahedron being formed from a stack of pentagons,but I ran out of time for the article and have to settle for a tetrahedron there.

I did, however, finish an animated dodecahedron after I submitted the article. And here is how it goes:

Enjoy!

Java News Brief (JNB) Expands Scope, Becomes Software Engineering Tech Trends

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 17:10:39 GMT

(Via Java News Brief (JNB) mailing list.)

Java News Brief Editor: For twelve years, the Java News Brief has served as a successful tool for promoting Java and educating the software development community.

Beginning in January, the JNB has a new name! The new "Software Engineering Tech Trends" will continue to cover Java and related technologies but will also address the broader spectrum of relevant technologies available today, including JavaScript, Ruby, Groovy, Python, Scala, Objective-C, Clojure, and .Net Rich Internet Application (RIA).

If you wish to be removed from this mailing list, send a blank message to jnb-leave@ociweb.com. Otherwise, we will automatically move your subscription to the new list. New list e-mail will originate from sett@ociweb.com

Thanks,
Object Computing, Inc

I feel that this expansion of scope reflect a trend that's already happening in the industry:

For quite some time now, some of the best Java programmers I know have experimented, advocated, and used non-Java technologies to engineer and deliver software systems and solutions.
The popularity of the non-denominational Lambda Lounge in St. Louis in the past two years shows that there is a thirst among software engineers for knowledge and information beyond Java.

The newly renamed Software Engineering Tech Trends is published on the first day of every month. You can subscribe to the SETT mailing list by sending an email to sett-join@ociweb.com.

The first issue of SETT is already out. In it Mario Aquino talks about Learning Programming Languages with Koans.

Java News Brief (JNB): Six JDK Classes You Think You Know

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 04:03:00 GMT

This month's OCI Java News Brief (JNB) is online now, in which Weiqi Gao challenges your Java knowledge with brain-teasers, Friday Java Quiz-style:

Weiqi Gao: For over ten years, the OCI Java News Brief series has been bringing noteworthy new developments in the Java space to its loyal readers. Simply by following this series alone, you would have learned eight scripting languages for the JVM, ten web frameworks, seven ways to mock your tests, and countless cool open source libraries to make your job easier.

However, with the progress of time, the Java platform has become more mature and has established itself as the development platform of choice for many application domains. Naturally, the jobs of some of the Java developers are much more mainstream than cutting-edge now.

With this change of pace of evolution, our focus naturally shifts from the shiny new libraries and tools to something more fundamental—the basic language constructs and the JDK class libraries—because these are the bread and butter of everyday life of the Java developer.

Weiqi went on posing five quizzes, involving six JDK classes:

java.lang.Double
java.lang.Thread
java.lang.Runtime
java.util.Properties
java.lang.String
java.sql.ResultSet

Go check it out!