Friday, June 12, 2009

Moving the blog to dev.elcipse.org/blogs

I intend to move this blog to
http://dev.eclipse.org/blogs/kmitov/

I also intend to be a little bit more active with blogging.
But, lets see...

JPicus - the tool for Java I/O analysis

"If I want to read something nice, I sit and right it myself!"
Mark Twain

I heard this quote just a few weeks ago. Do not know whether it is really Mark Twain that said it, but it is an interesting quote.

This is one of the "jokes" a friend of mine used in his presentation at JavaOne 2009. More specifically Technical Session TS-4588 which is all about analysing your I/O.

Have you ever wondered
  • How much I/O does my program use?
  • How much time is spent in I/O?
  • Hot spots. What can be improved?
  • Which handles are currently open?
  • Where was a handle opened and closed?
  • Why did a delete operation fail?
  • Where and when was this file deleted?
  • Was there some interference from external processes?
Well Pavel (my friend I have mentioned) has definetly wondered. A few months ago he came to me with a question whether I could assist him in implementing such a tool. A tool that will give us all this answers.
Generally my part was to implement the integration with Eclipse. A few views, a wizard, some actions, a nice perspective. And - this is the result


If you think such a tool could assist you visit JPicus home page.
It is still only free. But we are working on making it open ;)

And there is more on JPicus comming in the near future.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Sevilla, Eclipse, Arsenal, Bugzilla. What a team!!!

It is hard for me to say which one I find more entertaining - football or Eclipse. Because I love them both I was laying in my living room watching to the football match between Sevilla and Arsenal http://video.uefa.com/video/index.html?competition=1&season=2008&matchday=5&round=15105
and It just happened that I created a dynamic web project with WTP.

On the first page I can select the check box "Add project to an EAR". Laying in my living room with a notebook on my knees i find it "hard" to use the mouse to select a check box. But it is also "hard" to use a keyboard shortcut since there isn`t one. Can`t I create a keyboard shortcut for this checkbox?

Since I need this little feature I first try to implemented myself. I found in which plug-in is the Dynamic Web Project wizard located. Checked it out from the WTP cvs. Fixing the problem and creating a patch was really not that difficult. Testing the new functionality is of course mandatory. And what was left is just to enter a bug with the proposed patch. You can see the bug at https://bugs.eclipse.org/211126.

Well done for now. Than I returned to the football match between Sevilla and Arsenal and it was amazing that I haven`t even missed something. It took me about 10 minutes to add this small feature.

My statement is that Eclipse really has an "infrastructure", but opposed to other such "infrastructures" this one is helping me.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Performance, Performance, Performance

For the last couple of years I have been following this three simple rules when performance is the topic (I first read them in the book Effective Java: Programming Language Guide from Joshua Block)

More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without
necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason—including blind
stupidity.
——William A. Wulf

We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time:
premature optimization is the root of all evil.
——Donald E. Knuth

And my favorite:

We follow two rules in the matter of optimization:
Rule 1. Don't do it.
Rule 2 (for experts only). Don't do it yet—that is, not until you have a perfectly
clear and unoptimized solution.
——M. A. Jackson

I have always tried to do as much as possible to make my programs faster. Even small "things" like setting the size of a new instance of ArrayList, or creating an array with the right size when calling List.toArray(), using buffered streams and so on are part of my "toolbox".

And now when "performance is all around" and there are performance tests, performance indicators, performance gurus, performance standards I came to this wiki page:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Performance

The good thing about wikis is that everyone can improve them. So check it out, give your comments and share you experience.

"Performance is all around"


Thursday, October 18, 2007

Eclipse "Out of the box" experience

Yesterday I was in the university and I had a class for algorithms in cryptographic. The task was to implement an algorithm for encrypting an input text.

The computers in the class room have Microsoft Visual Studio installed. It was very hard for me to believe that I must use It, so I just went to eclipse.org and downloaded the eclipse for java developers. Just unzip and start. As always it worked. Just as it was. Out of the box. Without configuration or additional steps. Which is quite an achievement considering the computers in the university.

I can`t imagine that the "out of the box" experience might be broken and than I saw bug 203325.

Of course the problem is resolved and a solution was find, but it is a very interesting bug and you can really see that the community works even under pressure.