Software Apprentice

Kerry is always talking about Dreyfus and nursing competencies.

That got me thinking: is there a book you can give to a software developer that he can follow and use to improve himself through the five levels?

Well, I haven't read it yet but Elizabeth Keogh recommended me Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance For The Aspiring Software Craftsman. I shall put it on my list right after finishing the DDD book and several volumes on how to raise babies.

More on this topic: http://dannorth.net/2008/06/learning-to-lean - loved the Bruce Lee quote at the bottom.

Annoying Eclipse Configuration

I needed to get Eclipse to use a JDK instead of a JRE so I could play around with Maven.

Easy peasy? Well, no, not exactly...

"Just specify a -vm option in your eclipse.ini, and Bob is your uncle", they stated. Hah!

• I put the option in with a blank line seperator. Doesn't work.
  
• I delete the blank line after reading a blog entry. Doesn't work.
  
• Hmm, it keeps defaulting to my JRE, maybe I will uninstall that so I can "debug". Que slow Windows uninstallation...
• Now I get error messages. Maybe it is the space in Program Files? I'll put a %20 in there. Doesn't work.
• I discover option values go onto a new line (how obscure). Combinatorials ensue. Still doesn't work.

Turns out it won't work if you don't -vm option before the -vmargs option. Why??? Worse, it will just silently die/ ignore/ not warn you. Perhaps they should work on their error messages?

But i'm not ashamed to have wasted half an hour. Others have wasted time on this stuff too.

Isn't there a standard or convention for text-based config files, and couldn't someone get Eclipse to use it?