cfoley's Blog

WinSplit Revolution

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:54:00 +0000

A couple of days ago, I started testing a utility called WinSplit Revolution. It�s a handy little gadget that makes tiling and resizing windows as quick as a keystroke. I�ve never been satisfied with moving windows around and resizing them with the mouse. It�s awkward to get them to line up nicely and, although Windows has vertical and horizontal...

s = new String(s);

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 13:39:00 +0000

I recently discovered a memory leak in one of my Java applications.

"What's this?", I hear you say.
"Isn't the point of the garbage collector to keep Java free from memory leaks?"

Well yes, to a point. The garbage collector will clear up after you when you stop using old objects but if you leave a reference to...

Iterating text files the Java way

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 16:15:00 +0000

My latest Java snippet lets me iterate through a text file with a simple for...each loop. Using it looks something like this. Java's file handling has always seemed overly verbose to me (especially when I only ever want to do simple things with it) so I'm glad to have a more concise idiom.

...

Quirky Hello World!

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:59:11 +0000

I came across something quite interesting while I was coding today. Before I explain further, take a look at the following short Java program. It outputs two lines of text. Each line could be one of the following:

No Message
Hello World!
Not today.

Write down what you think each line will be, then scroll down for the answer. Don't cheat...

Testing a concept with JUnit

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:47:41 +0000

Welcome to my first blog post.

JUnit is a framework for running automated tests on your code. Essentially, you write tests to make sure different parts of your code are working properly. It really comes into its own when you make changes to your project. If something breaks, your tests should pick it up. Not only do you know that a bug has been...