Scott Murphy

So some time ago, I put up this site and thought I would use some proprietary SEO software I wrote to get me top ranked in the search engines.  I wrote a small suite of tools based on what I learned from reading SEOBook combined with some sneaky stuff I figured out on my own that would either get me blacklisted or be crowned the Search Engine king.  One week later, I became so engulfed in work that I haven't wrote a blog, or dusted the cobwebs off my SEO software that I never got around to using, since.

Being such a technology enthusiast, I am constantly looking (and hoping) for better APIs, languages, and programs that will impress me and permanently change the way I do things.  Anyhow, I thought to myself the other day,"I really need to start using my blog."  I have officially decided to stop working so much and start writing about my everyday painful expierences I encounter as a Software Architect.

I will now tell you about two of my most recent (painful) experiences:
1. Eclipse Ganymede 3.4
2. 64-bit Windows

64-bit Windows was so painfull that I will write about it in another blog.  So for now, let's talk about Eclipse Ganymede.
Let me tell you there is nothing more exciting then waiting a full year for a software release.  It is almost like waiting for the next big sequel of a movie to come out.  I remember when Lord of the Rings came out, I could not wait for Return of the King, and then finally the next one which I liked but forgot the name of--whether or not they will ever come out on Blue-Ray is another story.  BTW: I also painfully own an Xbox 360 HD DVD player and a Sony Playstation 3 for my Blue Ray movies.  Any one interested in buying an HD DVD player that has been used twice feel free to contact me any time. 

Getting back on track, I liked Eclipse 3.3 so much, the anticipation of Ganymede was killing me.  One of the main reasons I liked Eclipse so much was Mylyn.  Mylyn is awesome (It is ever more awesome when you are doing some consulting work for a company that has several thousand files you have to navigate through).  Mylyn allows you to tightly integrate with a ticket tracking system such as Trac (my favorite), JIRA (nice, but why pay when you can have Trac for free), and Bugzilla (the oldest guy on the block that for some reason has the worst user experience of the three--I think they named it right with the "zilla").  Once you activate a Task/Ticket it gives you a focused view of only the files you have worked on so far and thus are associated with the task at hand.

In comes Ganymede:
Integrated SVN (Subversive) -- Is actually nice, but a pain to enable.  Requires downloading a connector.
Javascript Support-- sucks
New WST -- Horrible
New Mylyn release -- Haven't dug into it yet.
New Plug In Software Update Support with Automatic Updates -- Buggy as hell

Okay, so let's talk about a few of these things:
Integrated SVN -- Subversive.
As much as I like it, I want to complain about a few things:
If you currently have a Project that is in SVN, guess what: It doesn't work and there is no "Add Subversive Nature"
I am sure you might be able to hack your Project file like you have to do to make a Java project a Dynamic web project which brings me to issue two.

NO "Convert to Dynamic Web Project" Support
Not only have the people over at WST managed to botch up the JSP parser, but the most widely requested feature over the past several years still isn't possible.  Let me tell you, it is really nice that they have the "Convert to Dynamic Web Project" action under the Project drop down, but you can only use it if you have a Static Web Project.  If it is so easy to make a Java project a Dynamic web project by hacking the .project file, why is it so hard to actually allow a user to clck this action???  Well, I will tell you why, that brings me to issue #3

Screwed up JSP parser
So here is Scott user with his 3 enterprise projects that work flawlessly in Eclipse Europa 3.3.  Scott decides one day that things might be better if he upgrades to Eclipse 3.4 and, what do you know, he now has over a thousand JSP errors in each project?!?!? Last time I checked, I am a damn good coder.  So what is going on here?  Well, I guess I am too good for Eclipse Ganymede because they decided (on their own) to take terenary expressions out of EL on their own--you got to love those guys!

I will continue this story tomorrow, my girlfriend is bothering me.