“Do Not Optimize Prematurely”, but be careful!

“Do not optimize prematurely”. A sentence that is worthy of hanging all gilded and framed on any software professional’s wall. Living up to its hallowed words has made our software more robust and easier to understand, therefore better and cheaper to maintain and operate. However, the credo has a nefarious side-effect that needs to be addressed.

Workshops on Java and the Database

On February 13th / 14th, 42 hosted a workshop aimed at teaching Java developers more about applications working with databases. The workshop was presented by Ron Smeets, our resident database guru. The topics ranged from RDBMS architecture, to DDL and touched on performance and scalability. Students hacked away at assignments in order to gain a deeper understanding of the subject material.

JavaEE 6 Web Profile and the Instant Developer Experience


When starting a new project, its common to create an "Instant Developer Experience": a new developer can get started by issuing two commands: get the code, and build&run the application. The only things needed are Java, Maven and an IDE.