tag
infinitum
- #10 3 min
Implementing Spring-like Classpath Scanning in Android
One of the things that Spring 2.5 introduced back in 2007 was component scanning, a feature which removed the need for XML bean configuration and instead allowed developers to declare their beans using Java annotations. Rather than this: We can do this: It’s a pretty simple idea since Java makes it very easy to introspectively check a class’s annotations at runtime through its reflection API. Spring’s component scan feature also allows you to specify the base package(s) to scan for beans.
- #9 1 min
Introducing InfinitumFramework.com
Here’s a dose of shameless self-promotion. It’s coming up on a year since I started development on Infinitum, and I’m targeting its first full release on its birthday, February 11. Shortly before I moved the project to GitHub, they deprecated the downloads service, so I needed to fine a home for distributing the binaries as well as the Javadoc. GitHub offers its pages service, but I figured I’d just host it myself. I threw together a website in a couple days and the result is www.infinitumframework.com. This website will be used to host the latest (and previous) releases of the framework, its documentation, and, in the future, announcements and updates for it.
- #8 3 min
He Sed, She Sed
Shortly after switching to GitHub, I decided to relicense Infinitum from GNU LGPL to Apache License 2.0. There aren’t really any implications except one: replacing the license and copyright header in every source file. I’m far from being a Unix expert (more like amateur at best), but I figured sed would be the quickest and easiest way to do this. Sed is a Unix utility for processing text streams, and it allows you to replace string patterns in files. A simple string replacement using sed is quite easy:
- #7 6 min
Modularizing Infinitum: A Postmortem
In addition to getting the code migrated from Google Code to GitHub, one of my projects over the holidays was to modularize the Infinitum Android framework I’ve been working on for the past year. Infinitum began as a SQLite ORM and quickly grew to include a REST ORM implementation, REST client, logging wrapper, DI framework, AOP module, and, of course, all of the framework tools needed to support these various functionalities. It evolved as I added more and more features in a semi-haphazard way. In my defense, the code was organized. It was logical. It made sense. There was no method, but there also was no madness. Everything was in an appropriately named package. Everything was coded to an interface. There was no duplicated code. However, modularity — in terms of minimizing framework dependencies — wasn’t really in mind at the time, and the code was all in a single project.
- #6 7 min
The Importance of Being Idle
“Practice not-doing and everything will fall into place.” It’s good to be lazy. Sometimes, in programming, it can also be hard to be lazy. It’s this paradox that I will explore today — The Art of Being Lazy. Specifically, I’m going to dive into a design pattern known as lazy loading by discussing why it’s used, the different flavors it comes in, and how it can be implemented. Lazy loading is a pretty simple concept: don’t load something until you really need it. However, the philosophy can be generalized further: don’t do something until you need to do it. It’s this line of thinking that has helped lead to processes like Kanban and lean software development (and also probably got you through high school). Notwithstanding, this tenet goes beyond the organizational level. It’s about optimizing efficiency and minimizing waste. There’s a lot to be said about optimizing efficiency in a computer program, which is why The Art of Being Lazy is an exceedingly relevant principle.