You can also join the design patterns user group: http://archives.java.sun.com/archives/j2eepatterns-interest.html
Mark -----Original Message----- From: Craig R. McClanahan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 12:02 AM To: Struts Users Mailing List Subject: Re: The best way for learning struts (stupid question) Snipping to just the questions. On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, joni santoso wrote: > >* Design patterns (at the programming level) > > any good sites for learning this? I read already the theoretical ones > but at the programming level, sometimes I'm still confused to use > which DP. > The classic text (and the one that really popularized the notion of caring about the "design patterns" concept) is by four authors colloquially known as the "Gang of Four" (or GoF): Gamma, Helms, Johnson, Vlissides, DESIGN PATTERNS: ELEMENTS OF REUSABLE OBJECT-ORIENTED SOFTWARE, Addison-Wesley, 1995. Punch "design patterns" into Google or Amazon and you'll find lots of info sources, including many focused on Java or J2EE (servlet/JSP are the standard web tier technologies for J2EE). On "when to use which patterns", it's a skill that comes from practice and experience. However, I'd start by seeing if your problem space is similar to things in the "Applicability" section of many pattern descriptions. And check the "Consequence" (both good and bad) to see if applying this pattern would help you towards better results. > > > >* Unit testing concepts and test-first design (JUnit is a wonderful > > tool for this in the Java space) > > I learned this too. But, it seems that there're a few tutorial on > JUnit. Can anyone here refer me? > There's some philosophical and introductory stuff on the JUnit web site (www.junit.org). But JUnit is primarily a tool to implement a philosophy -- the philosophy of "unit testing" as a discipline. You might want to search for that term to get some references. One thing you might want to do is download the source code to a small bit of code that is heavily unit tested (such as commons-beanutils that Struts uses), and see what we did -- the intent was to write tests for every possible invocation of every possible method. Having the tests in place does two primary things for us: * Documented proof that the method being tested behaves according to it's (Javadoc) specification * Protection from future developers making changes and inadvertently changing the behavior that users of the code depend on. You can grab a source distro of commons-beanutils (pick any recent nightly build) at: http://jakarta.apache.org/builds/jakarta-commons/nightly/commons-beanutils/ and look in the "src/test" directory for the unit tests. Unit testing is also one of the foundations of a development approach called Extreme Programming (XP), so there will be lots of pointers and examples in the information about XP as well. > >* Architecture of the web (particularly how HTTP, HTML, > >and > > JavaScript work) > > can you elaborate more? As a Software Developer for mostly web, I know > how the JS and HTML work. But why I should know about HTTP? > Well, the web runs on HTTP. The facts that HTTP is synchronous (request/response) oriented, and stateless, are critically important. The facts of how security and cookies work are driven by the HTTP standards. Little details like the fact that HTTP headers are sent at the beginning of a message, so you can't usually add them at the end of your servlet, will help you avoid lots of frustration. It's sort of like learning to drive -- if you focus on the mechanics of steering a car, but don't understand the driving laws in your country, you're likely to have a lot more problems than if you had studied both :-). > > > > >* The Servlet API -- foundation to every Java-based web > >application > > done. Though, I don't explore them thoroughly. Only, when > I meet a very special case like how to limit the number of > access a user can make to the web app, delivering image on > the fly, creating an excel file, etc. > It's fine to learn the details as you need them, but if you haven't done a pretty complete overview, then how do you know what's there that you *haven't* needed yet? Servlets are foundational to understanding JSP. Craig -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
