Steven Yong's Weblog

/*
  Person.java
  Created on December 22, 2005, 9:00 PM
*/
import static java.lang.System.out; // 1) Static import

@Pojo ("person") // 2) Annotation (metadata)
public class Person {
  Gender gender; // 3) Type-safe enumeration  
  String firstName;
  String lastName;

  public Person(String firstName, String lastName, Gender gender) {
    this.firstName = firstName;
    this.lastName = lastName;
    this.gender = gender;
    assert(gender != Gender.NEUTRAL); // Assertion J2SE 1.4
  }

  public void join(Group<Person> g) {
    g.add(this);
  }

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Person p = new Person("Faye", "Wong", Gender.FEMALE);
    Group<Person> personGroup = new Group<Person>(); // 4) Generics
    p.join(personGroup);

    // 5) Varargs
    personGroup.printMemberInfo(p.firstName, p.lastName, p.gender.alias);

    // Ermmm... don't think I want to expose my last name
    personGroup.printMemberInfo(p.firstName, p.gender.alias);

    if (p.getClass().isAnnotationPresent(Pojo.class)) {
      out.println("Reference p is a POJO");
    }

    Group<Integer> integerGroup = new Group<Integer>();
    integerGroup.add(18); // 6) Auto-boxing
    integerGroup.add(new Integer(8)); // Prior J2SE 5.0
  }
}

// Enum Type
enum Gender {
  MALE("M"), FEMALE("F"), NEUTRAL("N");

  String alias;

  Gender(String s) { alias = s; }
}

// Annotation Type
@Retention (RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target (ElementType.TYPE)
@interface Pojo { String value() default "undefined"; }

// Generic Type
class Group<E> {
  List<E> members = new ArrayList<E>();

  public Group() {}
  public void add(E e) { members.add(e); }
  public E leave(int index) { return members.remove(index); }
  public List<E>getMembers() { return members; }

  public static void printMemberInfo(String... info) {
    for (String s : info) { // 7) Enhanced for loop
      out.println(s);
    }
  }
}

It's been quite some time I didn't write anything because I'm working on a project and required to be stationed at a client place which doesn't allow access to the Internet. And I'm mentally and physically feeling tired at home because I commute to work by train these days.
I've been working on software development using high level and modern programming language (Java for my case) for years. Due to the memory consumption of Java/.NET applications, I (and my coworkers) always complain about the relatively low-end hardware specification of my workstation. Similarly, due to the high pace evolution of Java and .NET, I believe none of the .NET/Java developers nowadays would be happy with Windows 95/98 installed on his/her machine. Anyway, in most cases we probably wouldn't be able to code with old hardware and sofware.
At the client side, my team and the team from the other software vendor are sharing the same office. Coincidentally my former collegemate is there and he is using RPG (Report Program Generator, one of the first program generators designed for business reports, introduced in 1964 by IBM) for working. Wonder how he works?
Not much special actually, he's also using Windows, with a terminal software which can connect to AS400, log in and start coding. Left aside the terminal software GUI, what I could see is barely the black color background and green color text. If he's good in Windows shortcut keys, he can even throw his mouse away. After some briefing given by him, I got to know that the arrow keys are so important because it has to be very much dealing with vertical and horizontal coordinates.
I can never imagine I could ever possible working with such language and coding behaviors. I have lots of fancy IDE free choices, I can anytime play around with visual designer using the darn cool drag-n-drop feature, I can always debate with my friends which open source framework/tool to use, I explore and research the ways to develop with AJAX which make colorful Web application more user friendly and responsive, and so on and so forth.
I do know that there are many programmers out there using Cobol, RPG or etc. to develop application for mainframe and mini-computer, but I never had the chance to know exactly how they work. Glad to meet you again, my TARC's friend!
As a Java developer, should I request more than what I currently have?

Working forty-hours a week is considered ideal but nearly impossible in software industry (don't laugh if you're working in other industries and still think that this is true as I know only software industry). As I'm pretty sure that you've been asked this question during the job interview:
"Are you capable working under pressure and long hours?"
But we've probably never been asked like this:
"Are you capable to be productive enough to work only 8 hours a day and get yor work done?"

Agree? Don't tell me, I know the answer.

Yes. Bosses don't expect you to work 8 hours a day, they expect you to work as longer as possible.

This has been puzzled me for the past 5 years: why are the bosses so dumb? Or are they really dumb?

Until this morning I fully realized that they're not dumb at all, in fact they're smart and they know their employees very well.
We're encountering some network problems this morning around 10 something. Before that the office was so silent, everybody seemed to be concentrating on work so much. But something interesting happened after the network encountered problem, people started talking to each other and the environment started become noisy. I remained silent. In this era which network is the computer, you might think that it's normal because if the network is down, we'd not able to get the resources we need to accomplish our task. It's definitely true, but the thing is that the network wasn't down, someone might say now "I know, I know, the Internet was down!". The Internet will never down, the fact is the gateway which allows us to connnect to the Internet was down. So, what really happened was we can still access our databases, our file servers, our app servers and other network resources, but we can't access the Web, email (external) and IM.

Are we still able to get our works done? Most likely I guess. It's absolutely valid to say that the Internet is the best resource to help you solve the problem on work, but the unavailability of the Internet access shouldn't be the obstacle for getting work done.

I'm a software developer, but I had never (and I never will) spent 8 hours a day on the real works. I believe if I could, I'd never have to stay any longer after 6p.m.

Beat me if you're struggling under pressure with tight project timeline and think that that's your boss' fault to make you work long hours.
For those who're literally working on real work all day and are still required to work longer hours, it's time to seek for new opportunities (OR evaluate yourself for the unproductivity).


PS: One day I might also ask: "Are you able to work long hours?"

Just read an interesting post of my friend's blog which I think every Java Applet developer should read. Enjoy.