Java

Welcome, Readers of the Future

I'm working on the next edition of Sams' Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours. Java 9 has a new HTTP client package, jdk.incubator.http, that makes it a lot easier to GET and POST to web servers and other software that communicates over HTTP. For a demo, I needed a simple server that could take POST requests and do something with them without requiring a user login. I was about to write one when I realized I already had. This blog takes comments submitted over POST. When the book comes out, I'll be ... (read more)

2017/06/12

Teach Yourself Java 8 in 24 Hours

I'm working on author review today for the Java 8 edition of my book Sams Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours. This is the phase of the project near the finish line where I get all the chapters back as edited Word documents, review the changes recommended by editors and answer any questions they have. I also give each chapter a quick read and make sure the code compiles. (I hate it when a computer book has code that doesn't compile.) One of the things I like about writing a 24 Hours book is that my ... (read more)

2014/03/14

Converting a WordPress Blog to HTML Files

I've been doing more programming lately, primarily in Java because I am writing several books that teach the language. I have a few big announcements coming soon about those projects. My current coding effort is an application that turns a no-longer-updated WordPress blog into a set of static HTML pages. The goal is to make it easier to retire a blog while keeping the content available in the form that's most likely to be future proof and extremely simple to move around. WordPress can ... (read more)

2014/03/11

Kim Polese is a Cautionary Tale?

There's a dreadful sexist commentary on Forbes magazine today by Eric Jackson that suggests early Java executive Kim Polese caused herself to be wildly overhyped and the same mistake could be happening today to Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. Under a headline that dubs each woman a Silicon Valley "It Girl," Jackson makes comparisons between the two women that all relate to gender, aside from flimsy observations that "they both like(d) magazine covers and editorial spreads" ... (read more)

2012/05/23

Teach Yourself Java While Still at the Bookstore

Out of thousands of comments made about the PAC expenditure story, this one on Balloon Juice is my favorite: Roger Cadenhead, who posted this, is someone who has churned out a large number of computing books, many with titles like Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 24 Hours or Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 21 Days. As a software engineer, these titles make me doubt Cadenhead’s credibility. It might-just-be possible to learn a substantial amount of Java in 21 days (it is a very large language once ... (read more)

2010/04/01

W3C Serves 130 Million XML DTDs Per Day

A Java application I wrote that reads several dozen RSS feeds started running into trouble with the W3C. Feeds failed with HTTP 503 "Service Unavailable" errors like this one: Server returned HTTP response code: 503 for URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd At first I thought this was a temporary error. HTTP 503 errors are defined to indicate that a server is temporarily overloaded or undergoing maintenance. However, the W3C Systems Team announced in February 2008 that they ... (read more)

2010/03/16

Real-Time Twitpic Images Coming from Chile

When news breaks such as today's massive earthquake in Chile, one of the first places where images show up from the scene is on Twitpic, a popular image-posting service for Twitter users. You can find links to these images on Twitter search by including "twitpic" as one of your search terms, but that's not as useful as seeing thumbnails of the actual images. You have to click each link to see what it contains. To make it easier to see the images being posted about Chile, I wrote a Java ... (read more)

2010/02/27

Book Giveaway: Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours

My newest book, Sams Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours, Fifth Edition, recently hit bookstores. The book is a for-absolute-beginners guide to programming Java, and this section from chapter one's Q&A section shows how much license I get from the publisher to have fun with the series: Q. Do you only answer questions about Java? A. Not at all. Ask me anything. Q. Okay, why is Prince mad at the Foo Fighters? A. Prince is unhappy that the Foo Fighters performed a cover of his song "Darling Nikki" and ... (read more)

2009/12/14

Kickin' It Old School with Microsoft Word 97

I began a new book this week on Java programming for beginners. I haven't been doing much computer book writing for a couple years, so I no longer had an installed copy of Microsoft Word 97, the version of the software my publisher uses to draft manuscripts. Word 2007 can save files in 97 format, but it doesn't support the publisher's custom styles, so I decided to install Word 97 on Vista. Huge mistake. Word 97 appeared to install properly, but when I installed some other Microsoft software ... (read more)

2009/03/10

Following Web Page Redirects with Java

CNET moved a bunch of its blogs to a different domain this weekend, including Beyond Binary, Coop's Corner, Geek Gestalt, One More Thing, Outside the Lines and The Social. I mention this because the change hosed Meme13, which treated all six as if they were newly discovered sites. One of my ground rules for developing Meme13 is that I won't hand-edit the site to make it smarter. I need the application to recognize when existing sites in its database have moved. Meme13 monitors sites using a ... (read more)

2008/05/25

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