Improving Podcasts

“Spartan Programming” is about making your code as succinct as possible along a few dimensions. In this podcast, Allen and Mike discuss the techniques, benefits, and consequences with Paul Holser.

Topics include:

• How it is and isn’t code golf
• “Programming in the small”
• Single-letter variables might not be the root of all evil.

Links:

• Spartan Programming wiki
• Jeff Atwood’s blog post
• Paul’s blog
• Paul’s web site
• Smashing Magazine article on _Why

Thanks for listening!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:26 — 15.4MB)

In this episode we get a bit more technical as Mike talks modularity with Leo Sakhvoruk and Modular Java author Craig Walls. We cover OSGi and Spring-DM in some depth. Topics include:

- Defining modularity
- Publishing Modular Java
- Describing OSGi and Spring-DM
- Answering complaints about OSGi complexity
- Differences in OSGi containers
- Benefits and pitfalls of OSGi in practice
- How Spring-DM is affecting the evolution of OSGi
- What is new in Spring

Craig’s picks:

- http://twitter.com/veryshortstory
- Ops4J Pax Construct: http://wiki.ops4j.org/display/paxconstruct/Pax+Construct
- Spring Expression Language: http://springsource.org

Leo’s pick: Google Web Toolkit: http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/

Mike’s pick: functional programming

- Introductory article: http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/fp.html
- Scala (runs on JVM): http://www.scala-lang.org/
- Erlang: http://erlang.org/

Contacts

- Craig (@habuma, @modularjava, @springinaction): http://jroller.com/habuma, http://modularjava.com, http://springinaction.com
- Leo: http://improvingworks.com
- Mike (@mikeabney): http://practicallyagile.com

You can provide feedback for this and other episodes through comments at http://improvingpodcasts.com, via email to feedback at improvingpodcasts.com. Reviews and ratings in iTunes are welcome as well (especially positive ones).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:43 — 27.5MB)