October 2014 Journal

T h e . C o d e R a n c h . J o u r n a l

October 2014 Edition

Howdy from all the CodeRanch staff, and welcome to the October edition of the CodeRanch Journal.

I n t e r e s t i n g . C o d e R a n c h . F o r u m . P o s t s

This month was time for the popular GeeCON event to be hosted in Prague. At CodeRanch we gave away 1 free ticket to the winner of our Java Obfuscation competition. We had a great response with some very imaginative solutions. But there could be only one winner, and that lucky person was Adam Czysciak who impressed the Moderators with his extremely obfuscated and imaginative "Moose Art" solution.

Recently, Richard Branson announced that Virgin have introduced an "unlimited vacation" policy for some of his staff. This intrigued our ranchers and started an interesting discussion with some divided opinions.

One of our members, at a recent job interview, got an unexpectedly thorough grilling on the Big O notation and the efficiencies of different Java Collections. Is this normal? See what our members think.

A Greenhorn asked about best practices for when to mock and when not to mock, which spawned a great discussion on general testing techniques and how your tests can drive your software design.

A Moderator sparked quite the political debate in Meaningless Drivel.

B o o k . P r o m o t i o n s . & . W i n n e r s

There's a book promotion just about every week at CodeRanch. Just ask a question in the appropriate forum and you're eligible to win a copy of the book. This week we have a promotion for a series of Beginning Java 8 books in our Java 8 forum.

Our recent book promotions and their winners can be found below:

Iron Clad Java

BDD in Action

Spring in Action

OCA/OCP Java SE 7 Programmer I & II Study Guide

B o o k . R e v i e w s

We have a dedicated forum for book reviews. This month one of our moderators has reviewed not one, but four books.

Iron Clad Java

Java SE 8 for the Really Impatient

Ace the Programming Interview

Java EE Applications on Oracle Java Cloud

B u n k h o u s e . L o u n g e

Every month we pick a book to read and talk about in the Bunkhouse Lounge. Here's what we've been reading

October : The Pragmatic Programmer

November : Practical API Design

December : ??? - We haven't decided yet. Have a suggestion? Add it to the pool

T h i s . M o n t h ' s . E d i t o r

Tim Cooke has been programming for a living for the best part of a decade, and a lot longer before that just for fun. When he's not writing software for the largest Derivatives Exchange in the World, you can usually find him around the forums with a cup of Tea in hand and his feet up.

S u g g e s t i o n s / F e e d b a c k

If you have any feedback on this month's journal then feel free to create a topic in our Ranch Office

J o u r n a l . A r c h i v e

Our previously published journals are available online at https://coderanch.com/how-to/java/JavaRanchJournal