Tools of choice

In real life I'm a software developer. That doesn't figure in much here, probably because as far as the web is concerned I'm an ordinary user, not a developer. However, one place I use the web is at work. No, not to browse fascinating articles from the blogosphere, unless the article happens to answer a particular vexing question I'm dealing with. My web use at work basically boils down to

• gmail
• a web-based bug tracking system
• searches now and then for answers to vexing questions
• researching and downloading open source software

This last bullet item has significantly changed the way software developers work, at least in the Java corner of the world where I dwell. Your mileage may vary, but for a large and still-growing set of typical problems, downloading a package and using it is likely to be a better option than rolling your own. You can't beat the price, and the time between "that looks interesting" and actually using the package is generally measured in minutes. There's no obligation and if the package is not quite right, the source code is right there.

Some examples from the toolkit I use at work

• Java itself and its libraries are now essentially open source.
• The Eclipse IDE. Now, I realize that IDE wars are to our time what editor wars were to the previous generation (um, that would be my generation, I guess), but Eclipse is the one I happen to use for a variety of reasons. One caveat: Eclipse is not just an IDE. It's really a whole platform. It slices. It dices. It has distros like Linux has distros. If you're not careful you can end up with a bloated mess. If you pick and choose, though, you can end up with a very nice, usable, though still memory-hungry tool.
• Subversion for version control. Again, other worthy choices are available.
• JUnit. The value here is not so much the code as the mere fact of putting something out there as a framework for writing unit tests. That said, I've had no complaints about the code.
• Apache Ant for builds. I actually don't use Ant directly these days, but I rely on it behind the scenes. Having seen one too many Makefiles that ate Chicago, I have no plans to go back to make.
• Apache in general for a variety of useful libraries, including networking (Mina) and general utilities (Commons)
• A new favorite for taming Swing: MiG Layout. If you've ever considered fleeing to a tall mountain in Nepal rather than hassle another mysterious problem with GridBagLayout and its little friends, check MiG out. Your life will become better.

Naturally this is just a particular, idiosyncratic view of what's out there. If you run Linux (as I do at home), there's the whole GNU/Linux/git/gcc/autoconf/gmake/gcc/... toolchain. If you like Perl, or Ruby, or Python, each is its own little universe. Any way you slice it, the amount of stuff out there is impressive.

Back at the blog, is this a real live example of disruptive technology? If so, what is the disruptor? Is it the concept of open source? Is the enabling technology the internet, the web, or some combination of both? How much does it matter that much of the internet and web as we know it rests on open source/free software? Why am I carefully saying "open source" here and not "free"? How many threes are there in a dozen?

All interesting questions except perhaps the last, but not ones I'm going to tackle just now.

[I still use Java, Eclipse and JUnit.  I'd now recommend git over Subversion for version control.  For various reasons, I don't have much occasion to use the rest of the list these days. --D.H. Dec 2015]