old code: comparing string length with 0

Today, for the 100th time (I've been counting!), I encountered this snippet of code:

 String blah...;
 if (blah.length() <= 0) {
 ...


I've been wondering why blah.length() is being checked instead isEmpty(). (Why the string length is being checked for less than zero is a deeper mystery to me).

I dug into it a little, and it turns out that isEmpty was only introduced in Java 6, way back in 2006. Our code is really that old mature!

get rich quick!

graffiti moneybags / CC BY-NC 2.0
Originally uploaded by boozysmurf

I just discovered Hacker Monthly, "the print magazine version of Hacker News". Today I spent some time reading and enjoying some of the lead articles. Although, they tend towards the sensational. Here's a summary:

• Lessons Learned From 13 Failed Software Products: Sweet! This is the kind of solid, real-world information that's so hard to come by. You can find tons of information about the guys who made millions, but what about those who did not? The latter are far more interesting, if you'd prefer to learn from the mistakes of others. At first I thought the article was about 13 failures of one particular person (woah!) but they're 13 separate ventures.
• How to Become a Millionaire in Three Years: This article is about what you'd expect. I wonder if there actually are any rich people out there who got that way via get-rich-quick schemes? The article is not a scheme, mind you, rather a jumble of stuff that may be worth doing, but probably won't get you rich. (Probably nothing you do will get you rich, let's face it.)
• Why I Quit a Six Figure Job: Is it sweeps week at Hacker Monthly? First you can "get rich quick," and next you're reading about the guy who "quit his unfulfilling job" - and you can do it too. I can seriously see why this stuff sells the magazine, but what good does it really do? It gives you the same little thrill you get from scratching a lottery ticket. A moment of hope and wish-fulfillment, followed by a minor feeling of disappointment. I agree with everything the guy says, except there's this:

  I currently have enough assets to sustain me for about two years, and there’s nothing that I want to buy, so I don’t need any more money.

  Well, I guess if you think you'll live longer than the next two years, you might want to put a little more thought into that. Ah, youth! Seriously, who doesn't want to do this? But is there anyone out there doing it who isn't at least partly nuts?

Beyond the lead articles, there were a couple more good items about startups. There was a kind of strange article about legal issues that seemed designed to scare entrepreneurs into hiring a lawyer first thing. And then I ran out of time.

It's a mixed bag. Maybe a little too fluffy, a little too much stardust in there. But I think it's worth the time spent reading it. I'll be back, at least for a while.

momentum, sluggish, but there

In the good news, I managed to work on my own little side project for two evenings this week. I spent a pathetic two hours in total, but it's better than nothing.

I also decided to try out JIRA to track my progress. Not that you really need a bug tracker on a one-man project. But at work we use bugzilla, and I've heard some interesting things about JIRA and wanted to try it. And maybe keeping track of things this way will help to keep me motivated.

is there a ball and chain around my ankle? i didn't think so.

I've got a coworker who feels it's his responsibility to notify me when I haven't been at my desk; as if he wants me to know that he "caught" me being absent.

Note to coworker: I don't report to you, and it's not your business if I'm not there when you come over. And by the way: I also notice it when I come over to your desk and you're not there. But I don't inform you of it. I also notice it when I come over to your desk and you're playing video games, surfing the web, or chatting with your online friends. You may get a vibe of disapproval from me, but you don't report to me either, so I keep my mouth shut about it.

In fact, it's not a rare occurrence for employees to be absent at odd hours during the day. The company does not keep tabs on the comings and goings of the worker bees, at least not so far as I can tell. Perhaps they make the reasonable assumption that if you need to be out for a few hours during the day, you'll make up for the time. This is something that I like about the company.

test development as mindless game

Today I sat in the office, working on a suite of TestNG tests, trying to get them to pass. The procedure was iterative. Run the suite and see a load of red bars. Explore each red bar to see why the test failed. Fix the problem. Run the suite again, being rewarded with more green bars and less red bars. Wash, rinse, repeat, until only green bars appear.

As I was doing this, I noticed that I get the same enjoyment from fixing tests as I do when scoring points in a simple, mindless video game. A really boring video game, but it's got that somewhat addictive quality. It's actually mildly entertaining if you read blogs between test runs.

to open source or not to open source

I took another look around sourceforge, and I did see some pretty cool looking projects.

But I've been thinking about a couple of projects that I put to one side months ago. I think I'd feel more motivated to work on those again. The difficulty will be in maintaining a strict schedule. I'll have to think about how to deal with that. My problem is that I pick something up and work on it for a week, and then real life distracts me, and that's the end of it. I need a progress-tracker/reminder/calendar thingy.

why not contribute to open source?

In my last post, I mentioned that I'm missing a sense of camaraderie at work, and wondered how hard that is to come by.

Maybe I could get that feeling by contributing to an open source project.

I tried exactly once before to begin working on an open source project. I went to SourceForge and took a look around to see if anything just grabbed me. I had a couple of criteria: it had to be reasonably active, with recent contributions. And it had to be interesting to me personally, the kind of thing where I though "cool!" when I first saw it. I didn't find anything like that; but I only gave it a cursory look.

I think I'll go back to SourceForge for another look. There's got to be some project out there that can use a little help.

I wonder who contributes to the bulk of open source projects? I've always assumed they're mostly written by college students, people with the most time. Or maybe the temporarily unemployed. I guess some people actually come home from coding all day and then code half the night away, too. It would be interesting to find out the number of students vs moonlighting developers.