Eclectic Amateur

Ob. Geek Stuff

I love my new job. For the first time in I-don’t-know-how-long, I actually got to spend the bulk of the day programming. And lo, it was fun to get code that worked at the end of it all.

Of course, soon I’ll be back to abstract design, requirements, test cases, etc. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.

Observations for the day:

• Java is still evil, but I’m getting a taste for it anyway.
• Eclipse is incredibly cool, although it needs more “for dummies” documentation.
• Java and XML actually do play together almost as nicely as advertised. If you ignore the part about beating your head against a brick wall until it all starts to make sense first …
• SAX is very, very nice. Once you figure out how to actually get it to parse your document at all, that is — but after that, it was a piece of cake to use, even for a Java novice like myself.
• Oh, and JUnit rocks. Don’t program in Java without it.