Akka, Spray and Play to come Together

Some years ago I started working with the excellent and powerful Spray library for doing HTTP, and I coupled it with applications using Akka to create RESTful services. More recently, I've become very impressed with the evolution of the Play framework, and it's full-stack approach to web applications. With news today from Typesafe that Spray will be incorporated into Akka, as the new Akka HTTP layer, then used as the foundation for Play, all three of these top-notch technologies will be coming together. I predict this combination will take Play and Akka to even greater heights, and I look forward to working with it! See the Original Article at ScalaLearn.com!

Wiring Up Play

The Play framework recently added support for constructing controllers with dependency injection - we look at the options and techniques for doing so, including Guice and MacWire

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Other People's Databases

My team has an elbow-length blue latex glove on the wall of our team area, with the words “other people’s databases” written on it.

This is our tongue-in-cheek reminder to always think twice before sticking your fingers (or more) into a database that doesn’t belong to your application.

I realized the other day that this is not a universal principle, and this came as a bit of a surprise to me. Maybe I’ve just lived with it as an axiom for so long, I assumed everyone else did as well.

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Emacs Power For Scala Development: Introduction

I’ve blogged before about using Emacs for Scala, but I’ve recently upgraded my Emacs-fu a bit further, and wanted to share the latest state of all the power of Emacs available for Scala development (along with a few loosely related power tools).

In this series of posts I'm going to carefully examine Emacs as a tool for Scala development, and include a series of video tutorials on how I've set up my environment.

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Matrix Method of Decision Analysis

The matrix method can help take subjective opinions and turn them into objective criteria when choosing among several competing alternatives.

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Introduction to Software Craftsmanship

In my observations, I’ve noticed two different kinds of professional developers: Those for whom software is a job, a thing they do between nine and five, a skill they know how to perform, and that they perform in order to get paid.

The other group doesn’t seem to think of software development as a job at all, more of a calling, an obsession, a passion, a drive. Most of the time they’re doing software development all the time – when they’re not actually programming they’re reading about it, thinking about it, learning about it.

A number of individuals in this second group not only have a passion, but a drive to excellence, and a high level of dedication and professionalism. I believe these individuals are software craftsmen (and craftswomen, as quite a few of them were not men at all, but I’ll stick with the one term to include both).

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Be A Horrible Warning: The Ergonomics Factor

After neglecting many ergonomics factors in my own development career, I get to serve as a horrible warning on the effects of this neglect. In this post, I describe a bit of what I’ve done wrong, and how you might want to avoid the pitfalls yourself.

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