Recently at the Lambda Lounge, we spun up a study group for the classic text Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (aka SICP) – thanks to Ken Sipe for the push! For many years this text was used for the introductory course at MIT (and other institutions).
I read SICP in my first CS class [...]

On the old blog here, I wrote 186 entries in 2008 and saw a slow but steady increase in traffic. Overall, I had 199,341 visitors (+29%), 142,268 unique visitors (+42%), and 333,975 pageviews (+33%). I wrote 186 blog entries in 2008 down from 197 in 2007. My blog output was definitely down [...]

As I mentioned last week, I’m doing a talk on how Terracotta can be used to cluster various aspects of Spring tomorrow (Wednesday June 25th) at the St. Louis Spring User’s Group. The meeting is at the Fenton Maryville University campus and will start at 6 pm. I’m shooting for about an hour’s [...]

At long last, The Definitive Guide to Terracotta from Apress is complete and shipping soon! Looks like it is officially published on June 23rd so order now.
Many congrats to Ari, who did the bulk of the work, including the most painful parts. I wrote a couple chapters, specifically Chapter 5 on Caching and [...]

I’ve got a ton of presentations coming up (11 in the next 2 months although many of those are repeats) so I’ve been reading Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds, who authors the wonderful Presentation Zen web site. The book itself is a fast and engaging read with a lot of interesting ideas. As [...]

In the wake of Google Android, people from three different grid vendors have written about mobile grids: me from Terracotta, Bob Lozano from Appistry, and Nikita Ivanov from GridGain. I think Bob and I both had the reaction of…”cool, but what would you do with it?”
And indeed when taking from a pure cycles [...]

I’ve mentioned recently that other writing has been taking precedence lately. I guess the cat is out of the bag now as our CTO Ari mentioned today that we are working on The Definitive Guide to Terracotta from Apress.
This is a group effort with many great writers at Terracotta helping out. [...]

Cedric mentioned today that the book he and Hani have been working on, Next Generation Java Testing, is now available for pre-order on Amazon.
I was a technical reviewer on this book way back in March and in general I would give it high marks. The book covers Test NG, patterns of unit [...]

I’ve been selected as a technical reviewer for Cedric and Hani’s new next generation testing book! I’ve started to work through it and I’m enjoying it so far. I’ve believed for a long time that testing is an integral part of any developer’s routine and it’s important to sharpen those skills over time. [...]

Just finished reading the book Beyond Software Architecture by Luke Hohmann and thought I‘d write a quick review. The book covers all the stuff beyond software design that are necessary to make a successful product, such as licensing, APIs (and other extension mechanisms), installation, upgrades and migration, patching, release process, etc.
I can‘t say I‘ve ever [...]