Welcome Welcome to our blog about all kind of topics that are related to software development. We blog about:
SOA, BPM, EDA, ECM and all the other buzz words. Beware some post might not be so common as you think. We are not scared to go against main stream thoughts.
Technologies like java, maven, springframework, OSGi and front end technologies and frameworks like jQuery, DWR, Flex.
Finally to make this happen we need tools and of course a Mac (well some of us do). So we blog about that as well.
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By Ben, on October 10th, 2009
First and foremost an apology to all regular readers: I fully realize GridShore is not intended to deal with Microsoft technology (or whatever detritus is collected under that name). However, this one is such a beauty of having to go the long way to get things done that I don’t want to hold back.
As with many a long and winding trail, this one started this morning with what seemed like a short hike across a small and uncomplicated footpath. You see, of late I have found myself making more and more use of the different features of Outlook (something to do with becoming more senior in my company…). Among others, I’ve found that I’ve started using the little flags to mark mails that I have to get back to. But I receive so many mails nowadays that even in a single day the flags get snowed under and pushed off the list. Of course I could just sort by flag status, but I prefer to have today’s mails at the top (rather than the flags and ticks from two weeks ago). So I had myself a bright idea this morning: I’ll just change the grouping of my mails to group by received date and then flag status within the date groups. Walk in the park, right?
Oh mother….
Continue reading The Long and Winding Road: a tale of grouping my mails using a user-defined field in Outlook
By Ben, on September 13th, 2009
The last few days I’ve been reading BAD Astronomy, a book by astronomer Philip Plait that describes common misconceptions, misuses and scientific abuses of astronomy. Partly written to be funny and partly to debunk the nonsense that arises from people misusing and abusing science, it’s a good and worthwhile read for anybody (especially if you have some spare time on your hands). [amtap book:isbn=0471409766]
Reading through the book I came to chapter 14, which deals with the doomsday advocates who swore up and down that the world was going to come to an end on May 5, 2000 due to a planetary alignment (more or less) of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. It was quite funny to read Plait’s description of why this neither would nor did cause catastrophe for our planet. But more than that, the chapter got me thinking about how bad science is all around us and affects us in sometimes rather drastic ways.
Continue reading Bad science…
By Ben, on May 21st, 2009
Like Jettro in his perspective on content management, I would like to draw your attention to another blog which was published on the Daily WTF and mentioned on The ServerSide. It’s hilarious and a good lesson as well: Java is Slow!
Enjoy!
By Ben, on April 20th, 2009
This year, 2009, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of a landmark moment for (Dutch) computing science: it is 50 years ago this year that Edsger Wybe Dijkstra, The Netherlands’ most famous computing scientist, published his Shortest Path Algorithm in Numerische Mathematik, the German journal of numerical mathematics.
The shortest path algorithm is a solution to a problem from graph mathematics. A graph is a mathematical construct consisting of vertices (or nodes) connected by edges (or sides). Each path has a value (a length, a cost, etc.). The object of the problem is to find the shortes path through the graph from one point to a certain other point. And just in case that sounds like abstract mathematical nonsense that nobody will ever have use for: this problem and its solutions have been applied to network routing, traffic pattern regulation and worldwide distribution of goods. For those of you who drive cars: next time you get in you car, take a look at your satnav — then say “thank you Edsger”.
Dijkstra’s algorithm is not the first solution to this problem. However, his solution differed from the solutions presented before in that it is simple and straightforward (most textbooks and professors covering the subject even remark that it is strange that nobody came up with this easy solution sooner). It is also one of the first solutions that was designed with implementation on a computer in mind, so it is optimal with respect to running time and storage need. This in turn undoubtedly explains its pervasiveness throughout computing even (or only?) 50 years after its invention. It’s also why Dijkstra is most famous internationlly for this algorithm; even to the point of being insulting, because it is really one of the least impressive results of his career, which literally lifted computing science from trial-and-error tinkering to a science.
Dijkstra’s career focussed mostly on developing the science of computing science, by developing techniques for constructing provably correct solutions to problems by constructing the solutions hand in hand with the proof of correctness. Dijkstra was a great believer in computing science’s mathematical roots because exactly those roots yield the properties that computing science so desperately needs: correctness, accuracy and elegance. One of Dijkstra’s axioms in fact is that Beauty is our Business. So in that spirit (and, I hope, in Dijkstra’s spirit as well) I would like to present this birthday salute to Dijkstra’s algorithm – and to the man himself as well: a construction of Dijkstra’s Algorithm.
Continue reading Dutch Direct: Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Dijkstra’s Shortest Path algorithm
By jettro, on March 8th, 2009
  I have written some posts about using flex and the project Spring BlazeDS Integration. If you haven’t read that post I suggest you start there first : Flex remoting without configuring the client. That said, what is this post about? As the title already says, we are going to upgrade the example from the previous blog post to use the new features of the M2 release of spring Blazeds integration.
Continue reading Upgrading to Spring BlazeDS Integration M2
By jettro, on March 5th, 2009
Hi All, this a some what unusual post. It is not about technology. Well, that’s not completely true, let’s rephrase. This post does not contain code. This post is a shameless plug for the ApacheCon 2009 in Amsterdam. Why> Because it is a very nice event at a nice location. I was there last [...]
By Ben, on January 26th, 2009
Following a trackback to your own blog entry can be interesting from time to time. Today, for instance, I was led to an interesting blog from quite some years ago on the sys-con site by Michael Yuan entitled “Is Ruby Replacing Java? – Not So Fast”. In his blog, Michael talks a bit about why he thinks Ruby and RoR will not push Java out of the web application development arena. Part of his argument is that each development system tends to etch out a niche for itself, to attain dominance there and to be almost impossible to force out due to the traction it gathers in that niche.
His other argument, I think, is far more interesting and fundamental to the understanding of software engineering. To quote Micheal:
Instead, it matters far more to have better requirement gathering, better customer feedback, better development process, better trained developers, and better development tools (e.g., IDEs). In software engineering speak, the actual implementation of a system using a specific programming language has the lowest value in the value chain, and can be easily outsourced.
To put it another way (a way that I have tried to get many people to understand at different times):
It’s not about the language, people!!!
Continue reading It’s not about the language, people….
By Ben, on December 27th, 2008
Over the course of a number of different posts on Gridshore, I have mentioned a number of different ideas (mine as well as others’) that I was planning to introduce into my project and of which I promised to report the results. However, I fear that it has become impossible for me to do [...]
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