Blogging Roller

This site is again running the latest from Roller's CVS. Everything looks good, but OSCache 2.0-beta2 isn't writing to the disk cache on this site either. I'm not sure this is a bug (but I filed one anyway), perhaps OSCache 2.0-beta2 no longer needs to write to disk when cache.memory and the cache.entries is set to a low value.

UPDATE: It is an OSCache bug and a fix is forthcoming (thanks OSCache crew), the recommended work-around is to add the following to oscache.properties

cache.persistence.class=com.opensymphony.oscache.plugins.diskpersistence.DiskPersistenceListener

I work with a couple of Programming Languages geeks who are, it seems, always Scheme-ing and Smalltalking behind Java's back. One of these guys has a thing about the final key word. He believes that all fields, variables, classes, arguments, etc. should be final be default and that, instead of having a final keyword to declare immutables, Java should have a mutable keyword to declare those that may be mutated.

He argues that, wherever possible, fields, variables, classes, arguments, etc. should be declared final. Since Java does not default to final, you should default to final. Here are some advantages to this:

• If you declare and initialize a variable final, you never have to worry about it being null later. Nobody can change it, so it will never be null.
• Extending classes that are not carefully designed for extension, and let's face it most are not, is problematic. By mentally defaulting to final classes, you prevent potential problems.
• If you need to declare an anonymous class, you don't need to wory about redeclaring your variables as final because you already declared them that way.
• Other reasons? ...

My coworker is not the only one with the final fetish. Renaud Waldura is a final fan too. Brian Goetz writes that final can simplify your life, but points out that declaring classes or methods final does not make them faster.

Most folks out there in corporate IT land believe that webServices == wsdl + soap. Joe is fighting that notion. BTW, I don't think Joe means to imply that SOAP and WDSL are not well-formed.

Joe Gregorio: Barring any rename, which in all honesty I know won't happen, I'll just have to start referring to non-SOAP based services as Well-Formed Web Services.