I have gone through with some of the sample examples of blackberry.
And in some classes I have found some variables are starting with _ like _address and some of them are ALLCAPS.
It is a bit different than the basic Java naming conventions. Is there any difference between Java and BlackBerry naming convention?
I think it's just like any other company or person - everyone has their own coding style and you're just seeing the coding style of the RIM engineers who put together the sample apps. I don't know if RIM has a formal internal code style guide, but they haven't published or recommended one to developers.
I would say just stick with the conventions and code style you already use for regular Java apps.
Related
I'm starting to study Dart. It seems a nice language and in some aspects a real improvement over JavaScript. Since it claims to come with "batteries included" and to be meant for "structured web apps", though, I fail to understand how to actually structure a web app with it. Almost all the tutorials concentrate on language features, but Dart is quite simple and with many familiar bits, so that's the easy part.
Recently I fell in love with AngularJs. Now routing, two way binding, nested scope, clean separation of concerns... This actually means "structured" to me. But all the Dart examples I find are about selecting HTML elements and attaching listeners to them. This is old-style jQuery-like web programming and quite frankly the opposite of what I think of when I read "structured".
I don't want to compare a language and a framework and I know that Angular Dart is out, but I fear I'm missing something of vanilla Dart, because if it's all about a shorter syntax for lambdas, class based OOP vs prototypical OOP and the like, I don't see how it's supposed to be a game changer: there are many other languages that provide an alternative JS syntax (à la CoffeeScript) and compile to it, and they don't come at the price of losing a perfect integration with existing JavaScript libraries and tools.
Sure, it has optional static typing, which may be great, but this comes more to a matter of preferences. I'm a full time Python and Ruby developer and I'm perfectly fine with dynamic languages. Is this what they mean by "structured"?
Thanks for any clarification that will eventually come.
I work on AngularDart and have some experience structuring web apps.
When building a web app in Dart you would pick a web app framework, for example AngularDart or polymer.dart. Web app frameworks have a lot of opinion which is something that doesn't fit in the core libraries. In that respect, "vanilla Dart" is fairly vanilla.
Since I'm most familiar with Angular, I'll discuss the Angular + Dart combination. However, the rest of this post is also true for polymer.dart.
Angular provides a lot of structure to your app. We've been able to provide a similar structure for both Dart and Javascript. The concept of directives, data binding and dependency injection exist in both.
Dart provides more structure and we've been able to use that structure while building AngularDart. e.g. the directive API is defined in terms of annotations which means that IDEs understand them and can help you code.
There are a number of "structure" features in Dart. One of my favourites is tooling. With types and annotations comes better tooling support.
Types in Dart are most useful when combined with tools. Auto-complete is great but for large web projects, static analyze is even better. For example, in AngularDart, since directives are annotated classes, we can assert that the annotation is correct. Even more interesting is the potential to build tools. In AngularDart, we have a tool that extracts and analyzes all directives. This type of tooling is possible in Javascript but easy and supported by the language in Dart.
libraries, packages
integrated dependency management with pub package manager
class based instead of prototype based
scopes of variables as one would expect in a modern language
static syntax check
better tooling support like code completion
Say, I want to create a web interface for a program or application written in a different language other than Ruby, maybe, Java or C. Is using Rails still a good option ? If so, can anyone give me sources(links to tutorials or books) which I can refer to?
Thanks in advance.
There are ports of rails to other languages and rails-like things for other languages. You would use one of those ports, not Ruby on Rails -- what is normally referred to as "Rails" is a framework for ruby and can't easily be used with other languages.
For C, I'm not sure what you'd do, but probably not a rails-like thing (not sure how serious that question is).
For Java, there are light, MVC-style, frameworks that aren't exactly Rails, but more common. Look into Spring and Hibernate. There are other choices, though.
Not sure why you'd want to do that, but if you want a dynamically typed language, with an MVC framework attached you could do worse than try Grails, which is built on Groovy, which is in turn built on Java.
You get the scaffolding of Rails, with an ORM built in, and the advantages of groovy over java, namely closures. Better still, most Java code will work with Groovy, so it's great if you know Java already, but want to dabble a bit with a dynamically typed language.
Obviously being java, it's on the JVM.
I am creating a multilingual site that will need to support at minimum five different languages, including Korean and Chinese. The site language is ColdFusion, so Java is the native language. I want to make the site as easy as possible for the next programmer to update, and for third-party translators to use tools that will work easier for them than digging through a SQL database.
So far I have come across Resource Bundles, GNU's GetText, and TMX.
Which do you recommend and why?
Resource Bundles are my preferred choice. I have found they are kind to future programmers, self documenting in many ways, and, make it easy to manage subcontracting the translators. They have kept things simple, reduced my technology stack and have yet to fail me.
Good luck with your project, and, thank you for making life easier for the next developer. I wish more people thought like you.
comparing rb & TMX is an apples to oranges comparison. rb & getText are sort of the same thing. TMX is a format for computer aided xlation & xfer between tools/translators.
what you seem to be overlooking is manging rb or whatever. for large i18n projects rb get big & complicated. if you have multiple translation vendors (not recommended if at all possible) it all becomes like herding cats (what's translated, in what languages, by what translator, etc.). find a management tool you like (icu4j's rbmanager is what we normally use, jason sheedy's rbman is pretty decent too) then see what it uses.
and once again (in case anybody's forgotten my "bah humbug" stance) i urge you not to use machine translators like google or bing for anything serious. people could die.
An internationalisation library for Adobe ColdFusion which uses the resource bundle package style that Adobe Flex uses.
http://resourcemanager.riaforge.org/
You may try i18n support by MVC framework like ColdBox.
Use i18N Resource Bundles for coldfusion. Paul Hastings has a great set of cfcs at: http://www.sustainablegis.com/blog/cfg11n/index.cfm?mode=cat&catid=F46401DD-50FC-543B-1F1FBE4F2BAD6B83
Days ago I read something like "Ruby on Rails is for web applications, Django is for standard webpages". Is that true?
I have to decide in the next weeks if I go with Ruby on Rails or Django for an university project. It will be an email marketing software.
What do you advise me to use?
This is mainly because of their heritage - Rails was originally used for web applications like Basecamp, while Django was used to build newspaper/magazine sites.
I would say both have long since outgrown their original purposes however.
No that is not true, but however, Django has the built-in Admin back-end making it a great starting point for a CMS or something similar. Django is still very capable for creating complete web applications!
I presume this is:
Ruby on Rails (i.e. the Rails framework, using Ruby as the programming language)
vs
Django (i.e. the Django web framework, using Python as the programming language)
Both of these frameworks are Model View Controller (MVC) frameworks, so they are both capable of web applications and web pages.
Therefore, your decision is really "Python or Ruby".
Both Ruby and Python are object-oriented languages and are easy to get into... they both have quick-start guides here:
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/documentation/quickstart/
http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide
I think Ruby has the edge in terms of simple documentation and ease of use - as long as you are happy to abide by the rules that the language enforces (which aren't necessarily a bad thing by the way).
Both frameworks are great for what you're trying to do and Ruby and Python are similar in a lot of ways. My suggestion would be to skim through the online documentation for each and go with what feels best for you.
First, you need to answer 2 questions:
Do you prefer Python or Ruby?
Do you need a minimalistic framework, or a more complete one?
As a minimalistic framework in Python, take a look at web.py.
Both are great frameworks.
The question is.. Do you prefer (or feel more comfortable, or know better) 'Python' or 'Ruby'?
Once you have the answer to this question you also have the answer to the original one.
You can use either framework to create almost any web application imaginable.
If you have no language preference, and you don't have a preference for their different design patterns (Django is nearly not as strict MVC as Rails), then think about the different Python and Ruby libraries/apis out there that could be useful for your project.
Go with whichever language supports those libraries/apis that help you the most.
In my experience, Rails developers are more likely to work in small, funded startups. Django seems to be the preferred environment for independent consultants building websites for small businesses. If you're picking a language to gain experience, you might keep this in mind.
You'll be spending most of your time configuring, learning the tools, frameworks, and environments. The language itself (Ruby or Python) will not be a big hurdle for you.
Also - Rails is really nice to develop with on a Mac. I don't know about Django tools.
What tools are available for metamodelling?
Especially for developing diagram editors, at the moment trying out Eclipse GMF
Wondering what other options are out there?
Any comparison available?
Your question is simply too broad for a single answer - due to many aspects.
First, meta-modelling is not a set term, but rather a very fuzzy thing, including modelling models of models and reaching out to terms like MDA.
Second, there are numerous options to developing diagram editors - going the Eclipse way is surely a nice option.
To get you at least started in the Eclipse department:
have a look at MOF, that is architecture for "meta-modelling" from the OMG (the guys, that maintain UML)
from there approach EMOF, a sub set which is supported by the Eclipse Modelling Framework in the incarnation of Ecore.
building something on top of GMF might be indeed a good idea, because that's the way existing diagram editors for the Eclipse platform take (e.g. Omondo's EclipseUML)
there are a lot of tools existing in the Eclipse environment, that can utilize Ecore - I simply hope, that GMF builts on top of Ecore itself.
Dia has an API for this - I was able to fairly trivially frig their UML editor into a basic ER modelling tool by changing the arrow styles. With a DB reversengineering tool I found in sourceforge (took the schema and spat out dia files) you could use this to document databases. While what I did was fairly trivial, the API was quite straightforward and it didn't take me that long to work out how to make the change.
If you're of a mind to try out Smalltalk There used to be a Smalltalk meta-case framework called DOME which does this sort of thing. If you download VisualWorks, DOME is one of the contributed packages.
GMF is a nice example. At the core of this sits EMF/Ecore, like computerkram sais. Ecore is also used for the base of Eclipse's UML2 . The prestige use case and proof of concept for GMF is certainly UML2 Tools.
Although generally a UML tool, I would look at StarUML. It supports additional modules beyond what are already built in. If it doesn't have what you need built in or as a module, I supposed you could make your own, but I don't know how difficult that is.
Meta-modeling is mostly done in Smalltalk.
You might want to take a look at MOOSE (http://moose.unibe.ch). There are a lot of tools being developed for program understanding. Most are Smalltalk based. There is also some java and c++ work.
Two of the most impressive tools are CodeCity and Mondrian. CodeCity can visualize code development over time, Mondrian provides scriptable visualization technology.
And of course there is the classic HotDraw, which is also available in java.
For web development there is also Magritte, providing meta-descriptions for Seaside.
I would strongly recommend you look into DSM (Domain Specific Modeling) as a general topic, meta-modeling is directly related. There are eclipse based tools like GMF that currently require java coding, but integrate nicely with other eclipse tools and UML. However there are two other classes out there.
MetaCase which I will call a pure DSM tool as it focuses on allowing a developer/modeler with out nearly as much coding create a usable graphical model. Additionally it can be easily deployed for others to use. GMF and Microsoft's Beta software factory/DSM tool fall into this category.
Pure Meta-modeling tools which are not intended for DSM tooling, code generation, and the like. I do not follow these tools as closely as I am interested in applications that generate tooling for SMEs, Domain Experts, and others to use and contribute value to an active project not modeling for models sake, or just documentation and theory.
If you want to learn more about number 1, the tooling applications for DSMs/Meta-modeling, then check out my post "DSMForum.org great resources, worth a look." or just navigate directly to the DSMForum.org
In case you are interested in something that is related to modelling and not generation of code, have a look at adoxx.org. As a metamodelling platform it does provide functionalities and mechanisms to quickly develop your own DSL and allows you to focus on the models needs (business requirements, conceptual level design/specification). There is an active community from academia and practice involved developing prototypical as well as commercial application based on the platform. Could be interesting ...