Mike`s Blog

I've been looking for tools to measure and visualize code quality for some time now. Every once in a while, there's some tool which aggregates results from quality measurements and monitoring tools like PMD, Findbugs, Checkstyle etc. but I haven't yet found something which attracted my interest.

Read on to find out about Codehaus' Sonar.

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Taken from a heap dump of a JBoss Application Server with some applications deployed, i've look at the number of objects in the heap and compiled a 'popularity list' accordingly:

java.util
1. ArrayList
2. HashMap
3. TreeMap
4. Vector
5. Hashtable
6. LinkedList
7. HashSet
8. WeakHashMap
9. TreeSet

Read on to see the full list. I've marked some classes which I find interesting enough to have a second look on them. Know your library.

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Sometimes applications fail to start on Windows Vista. Sometimes, it can be resolved by starting them using an Administrative user account. And sometimes, they print funny error messages like Command and Conquer does:



The error message reads ***FATAL*** String Manager failed to initilaized propertly. (Typo left as-is)

While looking for a solution, i found out that there are millions of StringManagers out there.

What is a String manager?

I wonder if they meant someone who fiddles with strings and tries to organize them:


Or perhaps they thought about managers who produce strings (and all sorts of other undearwear):



What do you think about the responsibility of a class called StringManager and its design? Is this really a class in the object-oriented meaning or is it a trashcan for procedural utilities?

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My web site statistics show that

• 17% of my visitors are looking for Lemmings for iPhone, which unfortunately does not exist. If i'd know how to develop for the iPhone, i'd be rich by now by selling the game here.


• 10% use a Mac, 6% Linux, 10% Safari, 48% Firefox, 25% MSIE, 2% Opera, 1% iPhone


• 6% are looking for information about how to publish a Spring WebService


• 4% try to find a way to beat the end-level of Defense Grid: The Awakening


• 1% are looking for a XPS2PDF Converter, which, like the iPhone Lemmings, does not exist. Anyone want to join and develop such a converter tool?


• The other search-engine driven visitors usually look for the following tags:
  spring ibatis wsdl eclipse oracle hsqldb batch java heap dump flash squirrel osgi saferpay virtuemart mock tomcat pom.xml obfuscator jmx jboss easymock etc.


• All other visitors use direct links or newsreaders (approx. 200 visits/day, although I think most of them are some kind of automated web crawlers)


• The funniest thing to look for is certainly "messagesucker". It appears 15 times in the logfiles.

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make it work
make it right
make it fast

These statements are often quoted when it comes to discussions between software developers about software performance. Some people tend to emphasize "make it work" and leave the "make it right" and "make it fast" to the maintenance guys.

The statements should not be understood as

"Make the WHOLE SYSTEM work"
"Make the WHOLE SYSTEM right"
"Make the WHOLE SYSTEM fast"

Rather, I'd like to see it as a continuous cycle which reflects the modern development iterations:

"Make the CLASS work"
"Make the CLASS right"
"Make the CLASS fast"
"Repeat with next CLASS"

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