Sun’s Core Java Tech Tips news letter currently has an overview of two commonly used Design Patterns, the Singleton and the Observer. The articlegives a concise overview of how you implement these patterns in Java.
Better Unit Tests with PMD
PMD is a static code analyzer that identifies common progrmamming mistakes, misuses of the Java API and language, and other general areas for code improvement and refactoring suggestions.
Tom Copeland, the developer of PMD and author of the book PMD Applied, has an article on his website as a free additional chapter to the book describing how to use PMD to analyze Unit Tests, to improve JUnits and make the tests more effective.
Synthetica 1.4.0 released
Synthetica is one of the best looking Java Pluggable Look n Feels currently out there, and they have just released version 1.4.0 (for Java 5).
If you haven’t seen this PLAF yet, take a look at the screenshots here.
End of the road for Borland’s JBuilder IDE?
Borland has annouced that it is going to pull out of the Java IDE business, to concentrate on it’s suite of design tools instead.
JBuilder has long been one of the dominant IDEs but maybe it has reached the end of the road with strong competition from Open Source (and free) alternatives like Eclipse and Netbeans. Both of these have developed a huge user base in the last few years. Coupled with a few plug-ins you can have a very full featured IDE for free, which surely puts the pressure on IDE vendors such as Borland.
So, the future for JBBuilder looks bleak, unless someone buys up the code and rights to the product from Borland?