Andy Palmer

Following on from my Installing Eclipse post, I put together an empty workspace using my recommendations, as well as a couple from the Ivan Moore and Mike Hill session Programming in the Small.
Unzip the template into your workspaces directory and rename it to whatever you want your new workspace to be called. When you start [...]

I was talking to someone who had had a project manager mention in a retrospective that he felt that the testing was slowing down the delivery. They wanted to stop “wasting time” on testing and refactoring.
When I heard this, I said “That’s a bit like going on a car journey and your passenger telling you [...]

Earlier today Antony said on Twitter:
“stop apologising if your code starts out messy… it’s how it ends up that counts…. you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs”
I replied:
“Code _should_ start out messy. Finding the right places for things is harder when they’re already neatly in the wrong place”
If you have a preconceived idea [...]

I’ve just bought myself a netbook, and following the example set by John Smart with his article on installing Eclipse, I’ll document what I do with a clean install of Eclipse.

First Things First
I download the Eclipse IDE for Java Developers. The download is less than half the size of the Java EE edition, and I [...]

It’s a new year, and I thought I would write down some of my goals for the next twelve months.

Write more (this includes blogging and code)
Present at one or more conferences
Help out with the jNarrate open source project, you can follow the jNarrate project on Twitter
Further my understanding around NLP
Have a look at learning LISP. [...]

During my current day to day role as a coach, I get a lot of opportunity to find out where people are having problems, which things are causing them pain and we can talk about ways to move things forward.
Having real problems helps to focus the mind on the pragmatic rather than the academic. It’s [...]

A long time ago, I went on an advanced driving session. One of the things that my instructor taught me was a mnemonic for checks that you should do before every journey. The mnemonic was POWER[1][2], which stands for:
Petrol – (or Phuel for diesel cars) check that you have enough
Oil – Check the dipstick level
Water [...]

I can’t get no satisfaction, I can’t get no satisfaction
‘Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – The Rolling Stones
Checked vs. Unchecked Exceptions
It’s a controversial subject; searching Google for checked versus unchecked exceptions reveals a lot of heated discussions both for and against Checked Exceptions.
Charles Lowell [...]

When I’m reading code, there are a number of things that make my job much easier.The most important (in my opinion) is good naming, but how can we choose suitable names?This is the pattern that I am starting to see (and recommend), and I think it is pretty effective.
What? How? Who? Why?
If we think of [...]

ILikeThisBlogPost – but then I’m a little biased