Java People Spotlight: Bartek Majsak

I'm glad to write another people spotlight, this time about a "newbee" (from a timely perspective), or from a technical perspective about a spicy addition to the Java Geeks at our Zurich Office: Bartosz Majsak... well actually Bartek, but that's another story. He joined CTP in March 2010.
So let's see how geeky his answers are then!

Java Competence Role:
Senior Developer [aka Mr. T due to his extreme passion on Testing]
My Master Kung-Fu Skills:
I can mock you out even if you are static ;)
I'd be excited to get my hands dirty on:
Scala and/on Android

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Q&A
Q: Hi Bartek, how would your message look like if you would have to tell it via Twitter what you are currently doing?
A: Thinking how to design my own #arquillian TestEnricher and how to complete "The Challenge of Hades"  in GoW at the same time.
Q: ... and having some drops of Sudden Death on top of it? ;-)

Q: What was the greatest piece of code you have ever written so far?
A: Please come back to me with this question when I will retire :) After a few days, the code which I thought was the most brilliant I've ever written... I refactor, so... I don't have a good answer for this question yet :D

Q: What is the best quote you have ever heard about programming?
A: "If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in." (E.W. Dijkstra)

Q: What is the best quote you have heard from our managers?
A: "There is nothing as permanent as a temporary solution".

Q: What is the most cutting-edge technology or framework you actually used on projects?
A: CDI (JSR-299) and Arquillian.

Q: What is your favorite podcast?
A: I used to listen podcast while I was commuting but nowadays I'm a little bit out of the loop - living too close to the office ;) Of course I like Java Posse (who doesn't?!) and Software Engineering Radio. I'm also addicted to Parleys, DZone and InfoQ.

Q: Which Java book can you recommend and for what reason?
A: I really enjoyed reading "Implementation Patterns" by Kent Beck and "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" by Michael Feathers. The first one gives you interesting hints for how to express yourself through code by keeping it clean and easy to understand for others. The second one will help you to stay sane while digging  into the code of a person who definitely never read the first book. If you are serious about testing you should read Growing Object-Oriented Software Guided by Tests by Steve Freeman & Nat Pryce as well as xUnit Test Patterns by Gerard Meszaros. Of course all books recommended already by my colleagues are also just great but I didn't want to repeat them here.
Q: DRY pattern... :-) .... Well thanks for your answers and enjoy your mock-ito this evening at the CTP Summer Event!!


You can further follow Bartek's web presence in these directions:
- linked in: http://ch.linkedin.com/in/bartoszmajsak
- lastfm: http://www.last.fm/user/majson
- twitter: http://twitter.com/majson

Java People Spotlight: Erik Jan de Wit

After a rather long break, we are back with interesting articles in the pipeline, one of them released yesterday containing a nice video tutorial!
 
So today we want to present a rather new member in the CTP Java gang: Erik Jan de Wit, dutch Java power at its best!
Erik has joined Cambridge Technology Partners in February 2009. His technical excellence and social skills are true assets for our projects as well as for our Java oriented internal activities. Not without reasons, "@EJD" became an alias among CTP Java dudes to shortcut the fact that Erik will get "injected" and involved on projects, tasks...:-)
So let's check out the answers by Erik then!

Java Competence Role:
Senior Developer [aka Singing Scrum Master]
My Master Kung-Fu Skills:
Intergate new technology into existing projects fast
I'd be excited to get my hands dirty on:
Scala, ESB, JavaFX, Cloud-Computing and the new EJD... sorry EJB Criteria... well it's anyway JPA Criteria API :-)

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Q&A
Q: Hi Erik, how would your message look like if you would have to tell it via Twitter what you are currently doing?
A: Be a great Scrum master on this time challenged project

Q: What was the greatest piece of code you have ever written so far?
A: A screen scraper that enabled to integrate an external site into another site while changing all links back to our site including form actions.
Q: Really? I'm sure dutch scrum masters did something more fancy on projects than this....:-)
A: Well yeah, you're right: So on my kenai.com account I published an open-source framework which is basically a reverse regular expression generator that is used in the testdata project to generate test data that adheres to a specific regular expression. The testdata framework inspects your domain model and creates data for your domain. So if you use hibernate validator or bean validation annotations in your domain it will use the regular expression on the field to generate data that is valid. So that's what I used later on projects.
Q: Awesome!
A: And!! ... there is also a Scala version of it, based on the StandardTokenParsers
Q: Now we're talking :-)

Q: What is the best quote you have ever heard about programming?
A: All my peers are trying to talk dutch... very nice!

Q: What is the best quote you have heard from our managers?
A: I had to review Java code written in Turkish and my manager said: "It is still Java, it is not Rocket Science!"

Q: What is the most cutting-edge technology or framework you actually used on projects?
A: jBPM, Seam, JSF and Java EE6

Q: What is your favorite podcast?
A: I really love the Java Posse, I listen to it all the time... another that I like which is actually non-Java related is Best of Youtube VideoCast.

Q: Which Java book can you recommend and for what reason?
A: It seems that always the latest book I've read is the best one, in this case it's "Clean Code" from "Uncle  Bob"

You can further visit Erik at his Google Profile or on linkedin.

Java People Spotlight: Sylvain Berthouzoz

The "People Spotlight" series is catching up after a rather long break...
Sylvain has joined Cambridge Technology Partners in January 2006 and is an important know-how carrier in the Java Competence Group since then.
So let's check out the answers by Sylvain then!

Java Competence Role:
Developer [aka Java Debugger or Mr. jBPM]
My Master Kung-Fu Skills:
I can hit everyone with a single process in jBPM
I'd be excited to get my hands dirty on:
JPA2: see how they included the Criteria query...
...and to see what Ezio Audirore da Firenze will do.

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Q&A
Q: Hi Sylvain, how would your message look like if you would have to tell it via Twitter what you are currently doing?
A: Sitting in the train in hoping that the locomotive don’t break this time.

Q: What was the greatest piece of code you have ever written so far?
A: Testing if all the elements in a list are different from each other:

List< Long > list = Arrays.asList(longs);
Set< Long > set = new HashSet< Long >(list);
return (longs.length == set.size());

Q: What is the best quote you have ever heard about programming?
A: “koffienodig”

Q: What is the best quote you have heard from our managers?
A: "There is not enough boxes here."

Q: What is the most cutting-edge technology or framework you actually used on projects?
A: JBoss Seam

Q: What is your favorite podcast?
A: The gameblog podcast every week. And the Java Posse from time to time.

Q: Which Java book can you recommend and for what reason?
A: Seam in Action, because it is a great book to start with seam and you’ll also learn how to play golf.

Java People Spotlight: Domenico Crescenti

In this edition of the "CTP People Spotlight" series we introduce Domenico, one of the CTP competences for content related topics.

Java Competence Role:
Messica (insider)
My Master Kung-Fu Skills:
They call me Mr. Bean
I'd be excited to get my hands dirty on:
JCR 2.0 (JSR-283)

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Q&A

Q: Hi Domenico, how would your message look like if you would have to tell it via Twitter what you are currently doing?
A: I'm buying some insecticide to feed the bug in my code :)

Q: What was the greatest piece of code you have ever written so far?
A: That was definitely the play fair chiffre

Q: What is the best quote you have ever heard about programming?
A: "Cool!!! You didn't mess up my code"

Q: What is the best quote you have heard from our managers?
A: "........."

Q: What is the most cutting-edge technology or framework you actually used on projects?
A: Vamosa!

Q: What is your favorite podcast?
A: Discovery Channel Video Podcast – the US original of course – and the Java Posse Podcast

Q: Which Java book can you recommend and for what reason?
A: Java (Taschenbuch) by far the best Java book I’ve ever read.

Java People Spotlight: Daniel Käppeli

The "People Spotlight" series continues with a Java fellow who is at Cambridge Technology Partners since years now: Dani is continuously working in projects that most often deal with Open Source technology stacks.

Java Competence Role:
Senior Developer
My Master Kung-Fu Skills:
... there are so many to choose from ...
I'd be excited to get my hands dirty on:
Java EE 6 : see how all the bits and pieces fit together

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Q&A

Q: Hi Dani, how would your message look like if you would have to tell it via Twitter what you are currently doing?
A: Recovering from a busy week and from yesterday’s dinner.

Q: What was the greatest piece of code you have ever written so far?
A: Parsing an XML document in 1 LoC with Spring OXM. Isn't that cool?

@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
JAXBElement<GpxType> object = (JAXBElement<GpxType>)this.getUnmarshaller().unmarshal(new StreamSource(inputStream));

Q: What is the best quote you have ever heard about programming?
A: “These performance improvements are quite slow!”, K. K. 02.09

Q: What is the best quote you have heard from our managers?
A: "In the next quarter the hockey stick effect will kick in."

Q: What is the most cutting-edge technology or framework you actually used on projects?
A: RESTful Web Services with Jersey
Q: Wow! I actually didn't know that CTP uses that already... so we belong to the very early adopters of JSR-311 in customer projects! Nice Dani... when are you doing a Knowledge Share on this? ... Ok let's keep on with this short questionnaire first.

Q: What is your favorite podcast?
A: Discovery Channel Video Podcast – the US original of course – and the Java Posse Podcast

Q: Which Java book can you recommend and for what reason?
A: Joshua Bloch’s Effective Java Second Edition, by far the best Java book I’ve ever read

Java People Spotlight: Piyush Shah

"People Spotlight" is going to bring some light into the undercover hacker rooms at CTP where Piyush is getting his hands dirty on new frameworks and technologies. The picture tells both: his strong developer skills as well as his social engagements at CTP being official "CTP Staff" of the Social Committee...Enjoy!

Java Community Role:
Developer [aka 0800-DEBUG: "Who you gonna call?" - "Bug-Shah Buster!!!!"]
My Master Kung-Fu Skills:
Apache Tomcat 6, WebLogic 10, Javascript
I'd be excited to get my hands dirty on:
Spring and JBoss Seam

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Q&A

Q: Hi Piyush, how would your message look like if you would have to tell it via Twitter what you are currently doing?
A: Trying to break and rebuild Interwoven Teamsite to incorporate Xopus.

Q: What was the greates piece of code you have ever written so far?
A: request.getRequestDispatcher(URL).forward(request, response);

Q: What is the best quote you have ever heard from one of your peers?
A: "Developing an application is like making a movie"

Q: What is the best quote you have heard from our managers?
A: "XYZ technology, you can do it. It’s a piece of cake."

Q: What is the most cutting-edge technology or framework you actually used on projects?
A: Porting my custom code using SSH client on Solaris server and making sure it is Java1.4 compatible.

Q: What is your favorite podcast?
A: TSS (TheServerSide.com)

Q: Which Java book can you recommend?
A: SCJP6 - by Katherine Sierra

Java People Spotlight: Douglas Rodrigues

Our "People Spotlight" series continues with an official JUG Brazil member... "Braziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil !!! ;-) ". Besides contributing his excellence to CTP's Java Community, Douglas makes sure that Brazil stays the number 2 in the list of the countries with most hits to this blog! ;-) ... and here are Douglas answers:

Java Community Role:
Developer [aka Java Code Spitter]
My Master Kung-Fu Skills:
Write code that (almost) anyone can read and understand in the future.
I'd be excited to get my hands dirty on:
JBoss DNA and IntelliJ IDEA 8.

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Q&A

Q: Hi Douglas, how would your message look like if you would have to tell it via Twitter what you are currently doing?
A: while (!weekend) { iTunes.open(); while (!night) { iTunes.play(); doCode(); iTunes.pause(); getCoffee(); } iTunes = null; } // One-liners rocks! \o/
Q': and where is the exception handling??!!! ;-)

Q: What was the greates piece of code you have ever written so far?
A: An image to HTML converter. It takes a 30kB image and produces a 5MB HTML file.

Q: What is the best quote you have ever heard about programming?
A: "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from", by Andrew S. Tanenbaum.

Q: What is the best quote you have heard from our managers?
A: Well, I hear "we're all in sales" at least once every month.

Q: What is the most cutting-edge technology or framework you actually used on projects?
A: Java Content Repository API (JCR).

Q: What is your favorite podcast?
A: I'm not a big fan of technology related podcasts, but I tried Java Posse and it's kinda funny.

Q: Which Java book can you recommend and for what reason?
A: Head First Design Patterns

Java People Spotlight: Stefan Malär

Our "People Spotlight" series continues with the first candidate from CTP's Business Analysis team. "Java and BA? Make sure they don't consider PHP!" -- "No worries... having Stefan on a Java project is like doubling HP of your sports car:-)" -- Enjoy this spotlight on Stefan Malär:

Java Community Role:
  Senior Business Analyst [aka Java Backseat Driver]
My Master Kung-Fu Skills:
  Hitting the Achilles heel: discovery of bugs and weak spots in the code.
  Finding the missing link: getting to work whatever doesn’t.
I'd be excited to get my hands dirty on:
  DISC (AJAX Framework) in WLP10.2, Flex integration in WLP10.2, WSRP that actually works out-of-the-box...

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Q&A

Q: Hi Stefan, how would your message look like if you would have to tell it via Twitter what you are currently doing?
A: Getting our project live with whatever it takes, even coding… and of course telephone conferences with India, lots of those.

Q: What was the greates piece of code you have ever written so far?
A: A Firefox extension (that was in the days they were still called like that) to link and annotate websites and store this information through SOAP on a multimedia linking server.

Q: What is the best quote you have ever heard from one of your peers?
A: "Don’t explain it away" (bugs stay bugs...)

Q: What is the best quote you have heard from our managers?
A: "If you use JIRA you don’t need a code versioning system anymore, right?"

Q: What is the most cutting-edge technology or framework you actually used on projects?
A: WSRP, AJAX and SOAP mixed on WLS10 and WLP10. Really a lot of cutting and bleeding involved...

Q: What is your favorite podcast?
A: I was forced to write Java Posse here…, no seriously they are quite good, especially if they talk about non-Java stuff ;-)

Q: Which Java book can you recommend and for what reason?
A: Why read books if you can ask your colleagues whatever you need to know? (How cheesy is that answer! …, actually I can’t remember having read a Java book lately)

Java People Spotlight: Phuong Nguyen

Our "People Spotlight" series continues with the next Java Community member Phuong Nguyen!

Java Community Role:
  Developer [aka Fongdroid or JTroubleshooter]
My Master Kung-Fu Skills:
  Aikido (Java incompatible and performance leak issues debug & solve)
  Judo (Java unexpected errors debug & solve)
I'd be excited to get my hands dirty on:
  Android 1.0 SDK with a Google Dream phone

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Q&A

Q: Hi Phuong, how would your message look like if you would have to tell it via Twitter what you are currently doing?
A: Twitter??? Never heard about. Is it a new facebook application? :D

Q: What was the greates piece of code you have ever written so far?
A:

String documentId = request.getAttribute("documentid");

• This line of code will fail to get what we expect to get in a WSRP scenario if the consumer doesn't federate the data to the producer.
• In addition, for some specific configuration of an application server, it would be executed only once, or several times or not executed at all.
• With IPC (Interportlet Communication), it could have the effect that the second portlet get the old value of the last request (one step back effect).
• Many lessons learned from a single line of code. Isn't it great?
  

Q: What is the best quote you have ever heard from one of your peers?
A: "No problems :-)"

Q: What is the best quote you have heard from our managers?
A: "At the end of the day, we have to focus" (in french accent)

Q: What is the most cutting-edge technology or framework you actually used on projects?
A: WebLogic Portal 10.0 with WSRP

Q: What is your favorite podcast?
A: Jave Posse ! What else!

Q: Which Java book can you recommend and for what reason?
A: "The Java™ Language Specification", know Java as well as a Java compiler does

Java People Spotlight: Christoph Reimann

We now start with a series of "People Spotlight" posts to introduce Java related CTP consultants. Our kickoff candidate is Christoph Reimann!

Java Community Role: Developer [aka Java Grizzly Bear]
My Master Kung-Fu Skills: WebLogic 10, JSF 1.2, Hibernate 3
I'd be excited to get my hands dirty on: EJB 3 , Spring 2.5

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Q&A

Q: Hi Christoph, how would your message look like if you would have to tell it via Twitter what you are currently doing?
A: Right now I'm coordinating the database migration of a marketing application in production together with the single point of contact and the database team.

Q: What was the greates piece of code you have ever written so far?
A: Dynamic Form generation based on business rules

Q: What is the best quote you have ever heard from one of your peers?
A: "sure sure sure" (Martin L, onsite running gag)

Q: What is the best quote you have heard from our managers?
A: "Christoph, was isch denn das füren shizzle?" (BS)

Q: What is the most cutting-edge technology or framework you actually used on projects?
A: WebLogic Portal 10.0 portlet implementations using custom data federation with WSRP

Q: Which Java book can you recommend and for what reason?
A: Handbuch der Java-Programmierung (covers all J2SE topics easy to understand)