Want to be a Googler? Take the Google Aptitude Test!

Google has released the Google Aptitude Test

Take the GLAT for fun, or even apply for a job at google!

Cygwin and Windows Clipboard Usage

An option that I always forget about when installing cygwin is how to enable usage of the windows clipboard. For some reason it seems hard to google for (probably my laziness), so I'm documenting it here.

To enable usage of the windows clipboard from within cygwin, use the -clipboard option from the xwin.exe command. Previously you needed to use xwinclip (or similar), but it is now integrated within Cygwin/X...

Eclipse Saves The Day (Again!)

I found a new "must use" feature in Eclipse, which comes standard but is turned off by default. Of course, I found it because I was trying to fix a bug in our code. The bug ended up being similar to this:

if (something != null);
{
i++;
}

Notice that extra semi-colon at the end of the if statement? That burned us. (Don't mention the odd "brace on the next line" coding standard that is used the the project I just joined. I don't like it either.)

After fixing it, we wondered if Eclipse could show it as a warning. Of course, Eclipse comes to the rescue again. Under Preferences, select Java | Compiler. Then on the Style tab set "Empty Statement" from Ignore to Warning. This coding mistake could cause such large errors, that I really wish this was a default selection. In fact, after turning on this warning, we immediately found another bug of the exact same kind!

Definitely a bit to remember!

gmail invites?

Must have been a slow weekend, or everyone already has an account, because I didn't receive one comment from someone needing a gmail account? Does anyone else need one, because I have 6 more!

g-g-g-g-g-g-gmail

Invites for everyone! Just let me know if you need one, because the first 6 people to leave their addresses will receive an invite!

Driven by Tests... hopefully

A little late to the test driven side, I am, but I have played with JUnit for a while now. What I'm looking for is best practices to continue this implementation a little further. After some brief research, I have settled on the following setup for our tests:

Unit Testing
JUnit - obviously for unit testing POJO's
-> Cactus - for server side unit testing of ejb's
-> Strutstestcase - for unit testing Action classes. This I'm unsure of, but will look at Raible's project for direction.

Functional/Acceptance Testing
HttpUnit - Http/Html driven tests
-> JWebUnit - Extension driven by code
-> Canoo Webtest - Extension driven by XML

Anyway, if you have any direction for me, please advise!