Top Content 2009

Like last year, I'd like to talk a little bit about my blog's top content of the year 2009, as well as a couple of interesting stats.

Let's start off with some statistics, in particular my blog's page views. They increased by almost 30% compared to last year. I think it's because of posting my blog entries on dzone. It brings a nice stream of visitors for each entry, especially if it's a controversial topic.



Unfortunately, the time which visitors spent reading through my blog entries did not increase significantly. That indicates readers are accessing a particular blog post, skim through it and then leave again. I would have loved, if people find more interesting content on their way reading through a particular entry. Since that isn't the case, I decided to revamp the style of my blog a couple of weeks ago and remove all unnecessary clutter to improve navigation and load time.

Let's get on with my blog's top content of the year 2009. This year's winner is my overview of the proposed JDK 7 language changes. It's not alone though, there is another blog entry in the top 5, which is about the future of Java the language. For me, there's one big surprise in those top 5 blog posts: my sample on JBoss Rules, which was the 3rd most accessed post in 2008 and moved up to the 2nd spot in 2009. The most amazing thing about this blog post is the fact that it was written in 2006. So without further ado, here's the top 5 bog posts:

1. More JDK 7 Language Changes
2. JBoss Rules Example
3. JDK 7 Language Changes Coined
4. Having Fun with JDK's tools.jar
5. Java Runtime.exec Opens Too Many Files

What's coming in 2010? To be honest, I don't really know. The past year I published on a weekly basis, which wasn't really a problem, because I had a lot to say. In 2010 I'm planning to change my personal focus from the Java platform to the iPhone platform, Objective-C and mobile development. There's still gonna be posts on Java, I just don't know how many and how regular.

I hope you enjoyed my regular take on development and Java this year! See you in 2010.

Book Review: Beginning iPhone 3 Development

Apress was kind enough to pass me a copy of this book, which I agreed to review in return.

I reviewed a couple of fine books for Apress over the past two years, but I must say that "Beginning iPhone 3 Development" is one of the finest! The authors did an excellent job, addressing the code and complexity of the underlying platform.

When I first got my hands dirty with iPhone development everything was new: the IDE, the programming language and the environment to which my code is deployed. I didn't know my way around Xcode and I had no idea what Protocols are in Objective-C. This kind of knowledge is what the authors of "Beginning iPhone 3 Development" assume and work with very nicely. They are not trying to explain Xcode in every detail or tell you all about Objective-C, instead they focus on what you need to know right there and then to solve the problem the chapter is focused on.

I like this concept a lot! This way you get to know Xcode and Objective-C step-by-step in bits and pieces, with really good examples. Although the authors are not explaining all the tools and language features in detail, I think you really get a good sip of background information.

Another thing which really makes "Beginning iPhone 3 Development" stand out from other books I read lately, is the style of writing. It's not only the words the authors chose to describe a complex junk of Objective-C code, but also the way they approach it. They keep repeating the basic concepts, but always in a different way, so it doesn't get boring to read about stuff like Delegates and ViewControllers over and over again. It's just exactly what you need to wrap you head around this sort of topics.

If you follow the blog of Jeff Lamarche, one of the authors, you can really see that this guy is all about writing. You can find tons of tutorials there for iPhone development, which immediately remind you of "Beginning iPhone 3 Development". The style and tone of writing are quite similar.

After all the praise there is one downside, it's a minor one, but then again, to you it might be important: the website. It's really just a pointer to a phpbb forum, which is meant to be a place where people can discuss or ask questions about the book. That's all well and good, but the thing wants you to register, even if you merely want to download the source code, which sucks. I just don't need another forum account.

A colleague raised the question why you need a book, in order to develop for the iPhone? After all, the documentation Apple provides is pretty extensive and of high quality. That is true! Apple's Developer Connection provides a plethora of documents on all sorts of topics, all very well written. The problem with those documents is that they don't give you a coherent picture. It's more of a reference documentation. You go there, if you need an answer to some specific problem.

"Beginning iPhone 3 Development" on the other hand, provides a nice example for each chapter, which leads you through all the features of a certain angle of iPhone development. You can tag along and at the end of the chapter, you have a pretty good understanding of what just happened the past 50 pages.

For me, "Beginning iPhone 3 Development" gave me a good insight of what it takes to develop an iPhone application. It even encouraged me to dive deeper and change my development perspective from solely Java towards the iPhone platform. If you are planning to get started with iPhone development, go and buy this book! You won't regret it!

Scrum @ JUG-Ka

The upcoming talk at the Java User Group Karlsruhe this Wednesday is kind of an experiment. It features Scrum, which according to Wikipedia:

... is an iterative incremental framework for managing complex work (such as new product development) commonly used with agile software development.


It's an experiment, because we usually feature sessions on development topics like REST, Hibernate and Flex. A talk on a management framework, although it's closely related to development, is rather unusual for us. If you are not interested in this kind of topic, let me know, we appreciate your feedback.

The talk will take place at University Karlsruhe in room 102, located in the basement. Unusual topics call for unusual timings, so we'll start at 8:00pm this time. Our speaker is Dr. Jürgen Hoffmann of scrumcoach.de.

This month we are giving away a free book called "Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests by Freeman&Pryce". If you are interested in participating in the lottery, drop me an email. The winners will be announced at the end of the talk.

This is the last gathering of the year 2009. There's even more to come in 2010, so subscribe to our Google Calendar and stay up-to-date.