A mission to hold off the horde of for loops in Java. — A series of fortunate and unfortunate events I started learning Java in 1997. I thought initially Java would be a fad and that Smalltalk would emerge as the victor in the battle for object-oriented programmer productivity over C++. I was wrong. In the great object-oriented battles in the 1990s between C++ and Smalltalk, Java emerged as the…

After 6 years of blogging, it’s time to write some more. No commitment, No problem Last year I decided to release myself from the commitment to blog at least once per month. So how did I do this past year in terms of writing? I wrote 34 blogs in the past year. So 2–3…

Learn about Java collection interfaces with intention revealing names. — A quick guide to reading this blog I wrote this blog to help explain the design of the Eclipse Collections interface hierarchies to folks who are new to the library and might find the large number of interfaces disorienting to learn by browsing through code and/or Javadoc. …

Managing interface change in diamond hierarchies. — Inheriting Diamonds in Java Java is an object-oriented language that supports single inheritance for classes. A class can inherit from at most one single parent class. Java also supports classes implementing multiple interfaces. Interfaces may extend multiple interfaces as well. The following class diagram illustrates the two kinds of inheritance models supported in Java.

FOSS Projects and OpenJDK collaborating for a more robust Java platform. The OpenJDK Quality Outreach Program I’d like to tell you about an amazing OpenJDK Program that FOSS Java project maintainers should consider joining, to help guarantee that the Java Platform remains the best and most stable platform for software developers. …

Eclipse Collections supplies iteration patterns for any Iterable type. Iterating over collections Iterating over collections is a fundamental feature of any modern programming language. There are many common iteration patterns that have well known names and alternatives like filter (select/reject), map (collect), reduce (injectInto), groupBy. There are four approaches to implementing iteration patterns…

The slides that didn’t make the 50 minute time limit for our talk. No time? No problem. While working on a performance talk for QCon New York, my co-speaker Rustam Mehmandarov and I had more material than we had time for during our presentation. Our solution was simple. Don’t delete the slides. …

The story of small FixedSizeCollection types in Eclipse Collections — Sometimes, You’re on Your Own Every once in a while, we are required as application developers to roll up our sleeves and find ways to squeeze performance or memory savings beyond the built-in capabilities of our language and libraries. I started programming professionally in DOS/Clipper in the late 1980s when 640K was the memory limit…

The blogosphere is intimidating. Build confidence through practice. Note: I originally shared this on LinkedIn as an adhoc New Years 2023 post. I thought it was an important enough message to share in its own blog. You don’t have the time not to write Many folks have told me over the years they would like to blog but…