The Emperor has no clothes: Bad actors in tech

by Jorge Montero Maybe you are interested in a language, or an open source project, but you feel like the community is unwelcoming: Some big voices are rude, they’re downright hostile to newcomers and anyone who disagrees with them. Let’s not get involved. Or in your workplace: influential people in the organization aren’t nearly as … Read moreThe Emperor has no clothes: Bad actors in tech

Talk: Concurrency Options on the JVM

or, “Everything You Never Wanted to Know About java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService But Needed To” from StrangeLoop, 18 Sep 2014 Abstract: A careful design lets you write a concurrent application without thinking about deadlock or synchronization. Getting to that design takes a lot of thinking. This session delivers the background you need to make good decisions about concurrency … Read moreTalk: Concurrency Options on the JVM

Testing akka actor termination

When testing akka code, I want to make sure a particular actor gets shut down within a time limit. I used to do it like this:  Thread.sleep(2.seconds) assertTrue(actorRef.isTerminated()) That isTerminated method is deprecated since Akka 2.2, and good thing too, since my test was wasting everyone’s time. Today I’m doing this instead: import akka.testkit.TestProbeval probe = … Read moreTesting akka actor termination

Left to right, top to bottom

TL;DR – Clojure’s threading macro keeps code in a legible order, and it’s more extensible than methods. When we create methods in classes, we like that we’re grouping operations with related data. It’s a useful organizational scheme. There’s another reason to like methods: they put the code in an order that’s easy to read. In … Read moreLeft to right, top to bottom

When OO and FP meet: returning the same type

In the left corner, we have Functional Programming. FP says, “Classes shall be immutable!” In the right corner, we have Object-Oriented programming. It says, “Classes shall be extendable!” The battlefield: define a method on the abstract class such that, when you call it, you get the same concrete class back. In Scala.Fight! Here comes the … Read moreWhen OO and FP meet: returning the same type