Hayden Marchant

The familiar phrase attributed to Java applications of "write once, run everywhere" sadly does not apply to applications developed on Java ME. While the Java ME standard ensures that runtime environments are consistent across devices, the many idiosyncrasies that exist outside the Java specification require that all ME applications be tailored to each device. The differences in behavior can range from unexpected exceptions when calling certain API calls to performance issues in certain operations on the device. These problems cause many difficulties for developers, who have to ensure that their applications will work well on all required devices and to an acceptable level. Fixing a bug on one device can often cause a worse bug to emerge on another. In turn, adding simple features to an existing application can turn into an inflated task due to the unexpected behavio... (more)

Extending Rich GUI Clients with Jython

Allowing extensibility of a rich Java GUI is a daunting task. Each user may require slightly different functionality - this one wants to be able to import data from an Excel spreadsheet, and another wants to generate custom XML reports of particular artifacts in the application. You want to make every user happy, but you very rapidly see yourself with multiple code branches trying to satisfy those custom requirements - every Java developer's configuration management nightmare. Not only is it undesirable to dirty the code base with customer-specific functionality, but you don't w... (more)