Volatile keyword
What does the volatile keyword in Java do? For years I thought the keyword was quite obsolete, synchronization of values between the memory multiple processors seemed quite exotic. Since even modern-day processors have multiple cores, the keyword has become more relevant. A few months ago I saw a good presentation by Peter Veentjer on NLJug, that you can see online here. I can recommend the presentation.
Peter Veentjer also hinted about the Java Transaction Memory model. He was going to present on this subject on JSpring. Unfortunately I couldn't attend the presentation myself, but I guess the presentation will be online soon as well.
While searching for more information (that I could copy&paste) on the volatile keyword, I found the following excellent serie of articles on site called JavaMex: The volatile keyword in Java. I hadn't heard of the site before, from what I have read so far, the site has some excellent content. Amazingly what fine information you can find online for free!
Back from the grave: Model Driven Design
A few weeks ago I attended a symposium that was hold to celebrate the 25 year anniversary of Computer Science at the Utrecht University.
In the drink after I talked to former fellow students who incidentally both for a companies that developed software that allowed you to develop software very quickly based on high level specifications: Model Driven Design. I though MDD had died out a few year as a big promise, but apparently I was wrong. One of the companies, Mendix, was already quite successful, at least according to the person working as software architect. The software of MDACompany seems still work in progress, but their approach of metaphors looks promising.
I started noticing other publications and advertisements on similar technologies. Ordina, a Dutch IT company, started an open source project Mod4j. At first glance, Ordina is using a traditional approach to MDD: using a model to generate source code, which can then be customized. This approach had previously always failed, because in the end the customization was at the very least as costly and cumbersome as developing the software from scratch, but with less flexibility. Better approach seems to be using a DSL specifically. This approach is used by the two companies of the two former UU-students. Unlike Ordina, both companies don't develop their software as Open Source so there's little for me to download and try out.
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