Manuel Amago: UsefulLinks

Contents

Regular Checkpoints

Every Day

Google News

Good source for a round up of news from a number of different sources. I like to pay particular attention to the SciTech section.

Slashdot

A nice stop for all technology related matters. I like to check the developers, apache, books, interviews and science sections.

Once a Week

java.sun.com - The Source for Java Technology

Couldn't forget this one. From the creators of Java itself! Nice to touch base from time to time.

Java World

Used to by my favorite site for up-to-date articles on all things Java. In my view, it's a little worse for wear after the crash, but it still has some nice articles once in a while.

developerWorks (IBM)

A great resource for articles, tutorials, tools… They have a number of different zones (XML, Java, Web Services, …) and keep adding to/reorging these every so often.

O'Reilly Network

Another great resource for articles and such like, not to mention the publisher of some of the best technical books and book series out there (O'Reilly).

Software Development Resources

Resources

Martin Fowler

Martin's website has a collection of very interesting articles on a number of software development related issues.

Alistair Cockburn

Alistair is an expert in software methdologies and is a renown author on the subject of Use Cases.

Cetus Links

The mother of all links pages.

Agile Alliance

A source for all things Agile.

refactoring.com

The Refactoring book website. Here you will find a constantly updated catalog of refactorings, including those in the book.

eXtreme Programming (XP)

eXtreme Programming is the leading, and most controversial, of the agile methodologies. It has no official site as yet, but this is one of those that are dedicated to the principles of XP.

Java Specialists' Newsletter

Very interesting collection of articles that push the envolope of Java development. By Dr. Heinz M. Kabutz.

Joel on Software

Joel worked for a number of companies —notably Microsoft - before setting up his own company FogCreek. He regularly writes interesting articles from his experiences on Software Development. Worth a read.

Tools

Intellij IDEA

The best IDE there is for Java. Very slick, professional and responsive interface. It has support for a growing number of automated refactorings. Unfortunately it is not free, but it is worth every penny.

xUnit Testing Framework

A first class unit testing framework available in several languages. Based on the original design by Kent Beck in Smalltalk it is now available for other languages including Java (JUnit?) and C++.

Textpad

A superb generic text editor. I use it all the time for most of my text editing. Lately I have started to use jEdit for its XML support, but when I need to do something more dramatic (complete rearrangement of text —i.e. cut and paste--, etc), I always revert to Textpad.

jEdit

A java version of Emacs. A basic editor with a vast number of different plugins which make it a good choice as a generic progamming editor. (The XML source for these pages have been written using jEdit, see ramblings page.)

Zope

Zope describes itself as: "a leading open source application server, specializing in content management, portals, and custom applications." In simple terms, its a very easy way to construct and manage a website. Implemented in Python, comes with an integrated webserver, db, and a number of other tools. Give it a try! Then maybe you can move on to the more advanced features…

Castor

A neat little tool for working with XML in Java. From the Castor website: "Castor is an open source data binding framework for Java[tm]. It's basically the shortest path between Java objects, XML documents and SQL tables. Castor provides Java to XML binding, Java to SQL persistence, and then some more."

JDOM

JDOM is another XML binding framework for Java, which has been accepted as a Java Specification Request (JSR-102) by the Java Community Process (JCP).

UnxUtils - GNU utilities for Win32

UnxUtils is a port of common GNU unix utilities to native Win32. Great collection of little pearls! I especially like having wget on Win32.

Apache

PHP

A great scripting language designed specifically for the web. This means that its main purpose is server-side scripting: dynamic web pages, and the like.

Jakarta Project

An Apache project dedicated to the Java platform. There are a number of subprojects of which some of the most important are listed below.

Ant

Ant is a build tool for the Java platform. 100% Java, it can be used on any platform that supports Java. It is called the Java platform's make utility, but it goes beyond make's capabilities. Highly recommended!

Tomcat

If you do Java development, especially for the web (Servlets, JSPs?, …), you will have heard of Tomcat. The reference implementation of the Servlet and JSP standards, this is a highly recognised product in the Java crowd. Commertial alternatives do exist, but Tomcat proves to be a good alternative.

Velocity

A general purpose template engine. Proves a good alternative to JSPs?.

Struts

Struts is a Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework for use with Servlets and JSPs?.

Log4j

A logging toolkit for the Java platform.

XML Project

Contains a number of tools for XML, such as parsers, XSL Tranformation engines, and the like.

Xerces

An XML parser available in both Java and C++.

Xalan

XSLT stylesheet processors, in Java and C++.

Cocoon

XML-based web publishing, in Java.

Patterns

Patterns Homepage

Central source for information on Patterns.

Enterprise Integration Patterns

Enterprise Integration Patterns site.

Wiki Web

The original WikiWiki? developed by Ward Cunningham, one of the forerunners of the Patterns movement. An interesting collection of collaborative discussions on everything software related.

Perfomance Tuning

Jack Shirazi's Java Performance Tuning website

A good collection of articles, news and resources on Java performance tuning.

Programming Languages

Java

The Source for Java Technology: Mentioned above in a different context. Here you will find everything Java. Great resource for the Java platform.

Ruby

Ruby is a great OO scripting language. If you really want to get a grasp of OO, try Ruby! Open Source, with a clean syntax and built in support for regular expressions, it makes a great replacement for Perl scripts.

Python

From the Python website: "Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language. It is often compared to Tcl, Perl, Scheme or Java." For more details check out the link.

Security & Cryptography

CRYPTO-GRAM

Crypto-Gram is a free monthly e-mail newsletter on computer security and cryptography from Bruce Schneier (internationally-renowned security technologist and author, founder and Chief Technical Officer of Counterpane Internet Security, Inc.).

Computing Associations

Association for Computing Machinery

One of the forerunners of the Computer Revolution. With such high standing papers under their belt, like Dijkstra's seminal Go To Statement Considered Harmful.

IEEE Computer Society

Another one of the big computer associations.

Small Wonders

Gibson Research Corporation

Gibson Research Corporation is the child of Steve Gibson, a programmer dedicated to efficient programming. Hence, for him the only way to program is: assembly. There are a number of neat little tools all written in assembly for the Windows platform. Small, slick, and FAST! Check them out!

Miscellaneous

Word Play

Word of The Day

Try to add a word to your vocabulary every day. Is there a better place to start?

dictionary.com

I never get to write much, but writing and words have always been a passion of mine.

thesaurus.com

In the same vein as the link above, this sister site is also great when your having a bit of writers block.

Common Errors in English

A great resource for common (English) language errors — and non-errors — and their corrections.