Using a poor-quality server wastes everyone's time because the build takes too long to finish, resulting in intermittent test results and frustrated engineers.
Software Design: Growing Impact on the Industry
In this article, explore software design and see some different design tools you can use.
Prisoners of Retrospectives
What if not all of your team’s members feel enthusiastic about the Sprint Retrospective?
Feature Comparison of Java Job Schedulers – Plus One
Poor Oddjob, I thought as I read Craig Flichel’s Feature Comparison of Java Job Schedulers featuring Obsidian, Quartz, Cron4j and Spring. Yet again it hasn’t made the grade, it’s been passed over for the scheduling team. Never mind I say, you’re just a little bit different and misunderstood. Let’s have a kick about in the back yard and see what you can do… Real-time Schedule Changes / Real-time Job Configuration Oddjob: Yes Here is Oddjob’s Client GUI, connecting to an instance of Oddjob running as a Windows Service on my home PC. My Oddob instance sends me a reminder email when it’s someone’s birthday, and also tells me when it’s going to rain. The swing UI allows complete configuration of the server. With it I can configure the jobs and their schedules, but unfortunately I can’t control the weather! Ad-hoc Job Submission: Yes Configurable Job Conflicts: Not Really Applicable Ad-hoc job submission is really what Oddjob is all about. Many jobs won’t be scheduled at all and will sit in a folder to be manually run as required. To run a job, scheduled or not, just click ‘run’ from the job menu. Job conflicts aren’t really a problem for Oddjob because it won’t reschedule a job again until it’s finished. If a job’s next slot has passed, you have the choice to run immediately or skip missed runs and reschedule from the current time. If you want concurrent execution you can configure different jobs to run at the same time or use a single schedule and launch the jobs in parallel. Manually Stopping a job is just as easy as running it. Click ‘stop’ from the job menu. Code- and XML-Free Job Configuration Oddjob: Yes You saw this in the first section. Oddjob’s configuration is via a UI and is done in real time. In fact I often start one job as I’m configuring the next. It’s all very interactive. Oddjob uses XML behind the scenes for those that like to see under the hood. Job Event Subscription/Notification Oddjob: Yes It’s very easy to trigger a job based on the completion state of another job. You would have to write code to listen to configuration changes though. Custom Listeners: Undocumented Job Chaining: Yes There’s lots of options for job chaining, sequential, parallel, or cascade, and any nested combinations thereof. Adding a custom Stateful listener would be easy enough, and might be useful if embedding Oddjob but this isn’t the normal use case. The unit tests do this extensively however. Monitoring & Management UI Oddjob: Yes The same UI allows you to see the job state, job by job log messages, the console of an Exec Job, and the run time properties of all the jobs. Zero Configuration Clustering and Load Sharing Oddjob: Kind Of Oddjob has a Grab Job so you can run the same configuration on several servers and have them compete for work. I wrote it as a proof of concept but I’ve never had cause to use it in the field and I haven’t had any reports that others have either. Job Execution Host Affinity: Kind Of In the same way that you add the ‘Grab job’ to many servers to share work, you could in theory just add Grab for a particular job to only certain servers. I guess this is server Affinity? Scripting Language Support in Jobs Oddjob: Yes Oddjob has a Script Job for any language that supports the Java Scripting Framework. JavaScript is shipped by default.With the Script Job you can also interact with Oddjob to use the properties of other jobs, and set variables for other jobs to use. Scheduling Precision Oddjob: Millisecond In theory Oddjob can schedule with millisecond precision, but this isn’t usual practice. Polling for a file every 30 seconds, for instance, is normally fine. Job Scheduling & Management REST API Oddjob: JMX Only No REST API. You can embed the JMX Client easily enough and control everything from Java, but not for other languages. Not yet. Custom Calendar Support Oddjob: Yes Oddjob has the concept of breaking a schedule with another. The breaks can be as flexible as the job schedule itself – define days, weeks or just a few hours off for a task. The Scheduling section of the User Guide has much more on Oddjob’s flexible scheduling capabilities. Conclusion Oddjob has many other features to make automating repetitive tasks easy. One noteworthy feature is the ease of adding custom jobs by just implementing java.lang.Runnable. Oddjob is undeniably an amateur player in the Scheduler league, and one that is often overlooked. With its Apache licence it is completely free and open. Why not check it out when you have an hour or two? You might be pleasantly surprised by the quality of play.
The Memorable Power of Agile Storytelling
The best way to make an important message stick is through a compelling story. That's how our brains work. To promote Agile best practices, we need stories in support as well as to the contrary.
Fun Is the Glue That Makes Everything Stick, Also the OCP
The OCP exam is a worthwhile investment, but that in itself doesn't make learning enjoyable or effective. You must work on your intrinsic motivation by making it fun.
The Illusion of Safety: Thoughts on 100% Test Coverage
Test coverage is only a usable metric to know something is missing, if it is less than 100% but does not prove anything if it is 100%.
Like the Netflix hit Thanksgiving? Try watching these 3 scary horror movies
Thanksgiving is currently Netflix's most popular movie right now. For more scares, try watching these three horror movies that are also streaming on Netflix.
Best new movies to stream on Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Max (HBO), and more
The best new movies to stream this week include Oppenheimer on Peacock, The Color Purple on Max, The Pod Generation on Hulu, Thanksgiving on Netflix, and more.
The best hidden gems on Netflix right now
The best hidden gems on Netflix in February include The Vince Staples Show, One Day, The Tourist, Detective Forst, Boy Swallows Universe, and more.