The Real World: Poznań

I love Eclipse demo camps more than life itself.

My chosen venue for the November '08 camp is Poznań, Poland, which is about a 10-hour flight from my home town. Now that's true love.

The event is hosted by the Eclipse Enthusiasts of Poznań. In addition to being grad students and IBM employees, these busy guys author one of the more entertaining and informative blogs on Eclipse, teach Eclipse summer school and contribute code to the Eclipse platform. In short, I want to be like them when I grow up.

At that event, I plan to demo the latest and greatest in the world of database IDE development. Also, if there is sufficient interest, I may show home movies from my boyhood trip to Michigan :)

Eclipse Over Spain

Lost in Spain

During my recent Lost in Spain™ vacation, I visited Mallorca, Spain's largest Balearic island. Mallorca is home to tennis royalty (Rafael Nadal), Hollywood royalty (Michael Douglas and his young wife) and the summer home to Spain's royal family.

Mallorca is also the home to an old friend Emil, a mechatronic engineer living in the beautiful city of Palma. When I walked into his office, I expected to see a desk covered with electronic equipment, but I was certainly surprised to see an Eclipse application running on his monitor.



Eclipse and Mechatronics

So how is Eclipse used in Mechatronics on a Spanish island? Let's break it down.

Emil is developing a rich client application that communicates via CAN-bus with a range of electronic sensor/actuator control devices using a USB-CAN adapter.

With this application, he can monitor the states/errors, remote-control actuators and change the setting of each installed device. He can also send, read and verify the firmwares of all devices. The number of the control devices can reach 8000 in one installation.


Living La Vida Loca

It was very cool to see Eclipse being used on a daily basis in mechatronics. However, as soon as I realized that I was discussing Eclipse on my vacation, I stormed out of his office and enjoyed a street dance :)

The Real World: München

A Keynote at W-JAX

I am so filled with the joy of W-JAX '08 that I cannot contain it.

I will be presenting a keynote at the conference in November and I am thrilled. No holds barred. Nothing off limits. It is going to be both fun AND informative.



The First 60 Seconds

I will start my talk with the usual

"I am so happy to be in Münich... The last time I was in Münich was ... blah blah."

You can't go wrong with this intro. Everyone does this bit, including one of my favorites Tim Bray.

Astonishing Tales

Then, I dive right into telling astonishing tales of building commercial software on top of Open Source frameworks.

To give you an idea of how astonishing my tales are, here is a picture taken at EclipseCon 2008 of me telling stories to (from left to right) Ben Pasero (the smartest twenty-something guy I know who does not work at Google - yet), Bernd Kolb, and Martin Aeschlimann (JDT/UI lead and my bestest Swiss friend).

These three guys look mesmerized and I am hoping my talk will have this effect on the 800+ attendees at the conference.

What makes a good keynote?

To me, the best keynotes are ones that meet one or more of the following criteria:
1. they make you laugh
2. they make you cry
3. they make you think

If you have a story about commercial development around Eclipse that meets at least one of the criteria above, I would love to hear it. Please send an email to wassim dot melhem at gmail dot com.

Crime and Punishment

Crime:

Thinking that your action set is sooooo important that it deserves to appear in the toolbar of every perspective in every Eclipse product that contains your plug-in.

This very common Eclipse programming faux-pas is easy to make. All it takes is set the 'visible' attribute of your action set extension to 'true'.

There are many examples out there, but one example I was bitten by recently is the Ant/External Tools action set in the Eclipse SDK.

Running Ant scripts is useful, but its appeal is certainly not so universal to demand this ultimate level of visibility. The Ant action set currently appears by default in the toolbar of every perspective of every product that packages the org.eclipse.platform feature.

It may be reasonable to see it in the Java perspective:



It is questionable to see it in the Team Synchronizing perspective:



We have also inherited the gift of Ant in the SQL perspective of PowerSQL, where the target audience does not necessarily need Ant or even know what Ant is:




Punishment:



Lesson Learned:

Use the 'visible' attribute wisely when creating an action set, and nobody gets hurt :)

Valley of the Scotts

Following the announcement that my employer is to acquire CodeGear from Borland, I went down to the CodeGear headquarters in Scotts Valley, California to spend a couple of days with my new brothers and sisters in software.

The CodeGear campus is a stunning achievement in architecture and landscaping. I did not have a camera, but I think this aerial view, courtesy of Google, along with these photos will give you an idea.

You can expect many years of great software (Eclipse-based and otherwise) when the acquisition is complete, and I can only hope for more visits to the Valley.

Optimize This

Tuesdays with Ryan

Since the recent rave by Andrew Overholt on what a life-changing experience it is to have lunch with me, my social life has picked up. In fact, I am booked solid right through Labor Day.

At least once a week though, I make time to have lunch with Ryan Smith, a fellow program manager at Embarcadero, where we discuss technology, America's Next Top Model and the meaning of life.

One time, Ryan mentioned how I am far from being the hardcore Eclipse fanatic he had expected me to be, what with me being the PDE guy and all.

That is true. Je love Eclipse. Je can't live without Eclipse. But I don't blindly believe that everything that comes from Eclipse.org is great, and everything else is suboptimal.

DB Optimizer

For DB Optimizer (currently in beta), after evaluating our options for a charting component, I authorized the use of a lightweight, powerful and sexy Swing-based component that did not come from Eclipse.org. Does that make me a bad person? :)




Eclipse is a Great Technology, not a Religion

Incidentally, the IBM Ottawa lab has endured multiple disasters of biblical proportions (floods, power outages, etc.) over the years. No locusts yet.

So on second thought, maybe Eclipse is a religion, but I just pick and choose what is convenient :)

The Joy of EclipseCon

I am so filled with the joy of EclipseCon that I cannot contain it.

There Will Be Blood

On Tuesday, the PDE team is hosting its annual soiree. The evening starts with a PDE State of the Union, followed by a heated debate of today's most controversial plug-in development issues.
As opposed to other sessions that may put you to sleep, the PDE soiree is guaranteed to be an hour and a half of solid entertainment. To make things interesting, this year we will be using a new format: All debates will be settled with a duel, like in colonial times. Failing that, we will resort to a dance-off.

To Market, To Market

With the official release of PowerSQL scheduled for next week at EclipseCon, the ad competition is heating up. As you walk around our Toronto office these days, it is not uncommon to see motivational desktop wallpapers like this one. :)

PowerSQL to the Developers

eBAF.org, FrEDCon2008
Before Eclipse was called Eclipse, names that were considered included 'eBAF' (eBusiness Application Framework) and 'FrED'. I don't remember what 'ED' stood for anymore, but I am pretty sure that 'Fr' stood for Framework.

Have you booked your flight to eBAF2008 yet? :)

A Powerful Name
The new Eclipse-based product that I have been leading since I joined Embarcadero is set to be released the week of March 17 at EclipseCon2008. The beta was made available today.
PowerSQL is the name.

The Pert Plus Phenomenon
My favorite invention of the last 100 years is, by far, shampoo-and-conditioner 2-in-1. Forget the microwave. Forget the crantini.

PowerSQL follows the lead from Pert Plus. You will be able to do cross-platform database development (Oracle, DB2 LUW, Sybase, MS SQL, Generic JDBC) all in one IDE.

Off the Cutting Room Floor

My team of developers ventured in the area of marketing recently and attempted to come up with ads for PowerSQL. The production value is very high.

Romanian Idol

In the world, and particularly in North America, we have a shortage of superstars. More specifically, we are facing the worst shortage of idols in the history of humanity. There are all those great songs being written, and there is no one to sing them.

Shows like American/Canadian/Indian/Cambodian/... Idol produce one new idol every year. That's not nearly enough, but it's better than nothing I suppose.

As I head to my adopted home city of Iaşi this Sunday, I am looking forward to four weeks of Megastar (the Romanian version of Idol), project management and Eclipse speaking engagements.

On February 23, Embarcadero is hosting a conference at the World Trade Center, where I will be presenting an introduction to Eclipse and plug-in development, followed by the European premiere of the new Eclipse-based database IDE we have been working on for the past few months.


It should be a fun event. Iaşi is the home to 8 universities, so we are expecting a decent turnout of students wanting to learn about Eclipse and databases on a Saturday afternoon.

Romanian bloggers are all over this event. If you wish to read about it in Romanian, here are a few links:

http://www.asii.ro/blog/?p=83
http://www.joobs.ro/blog/2008/02/08/open-development-day/
http://olaru.blogspot.com/2008/02/sunteti-invitati.html
http://gabrielenea.blogspot.com/2008/02/open-development-day-iasi.html

My Bucket List

Here are a few random entries on my bucket list:

#54: Lunch with Paula Abdul
I would like to try to figure out what exactly is wrong with her and possibly counsel her.

#8: An elephant ride through the streets of India
Done.

#23: Co-invent with Chris Aniszczyk something cooler than Gamma and Beck's JUnit
The invention has to be done on a plane because apparently that's where JUnit was invented.

#39: Appear as a mystery guest on a webinar
Looks like I will be able to check this item off my list this Tuesday.


I will be joining Chris and Brian on their upcoming Plug-in Development webinar.

I agreed to join the webinar based on two conditions:
1. I can interject with humorous/hilarious comments any time I want.
2. I demand Evian water in my dressing room.

During the first half of the webinar, as Brian and Chris go through their presentation slides, I will be answering questions submitted by the audience in real time. Just so you know, I worked on PDE for a thousand years, so I defy anyone to ask a question I can't answer ;)

There will be a lively Q&A at the end where you can expect more hilarious/humorous comments.

It should be a good time. So if you are not watching "The View" at that time of day, join us!

Surfacing

Life after IBM

My tenure at IBM came to an end last August when I accepted the position of Program Manager at Embarcadero Technologies to lead the development of next-generation Eclipse-based products targeted to database developers. Good gig!

In a pleasant and touching surprise, I have been getting a lot of e-mail from readers of my blog inquiring how the new job is going.

To quote the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, "my life got flipped turned upside down" since the big job move:

• There is a huge corporate cultural change when you go from a company with 300,000 employees to a company with 300 employees.
• I gave up my thinkpad for a Dell.
• My Lotus Notes is now called Outlook.
• I now use this thing called JIRA for bug tracking.
• My new favorite acronyms are SQL, DDL and DML.
  
• I lead a distributed team of 30 developers and QAs.
  
• I work 23.5 hours/day - on average. I always make time for Wheel of Fortune.
• Working downtown Toronto is fun. I was on the cusp of becoming "too suburban."
• Eclipse is a great platform. I have always known that.
  
• I have noticed recently that Eclipse as an IDE is too project-centric. Have you tried opening a simple file for editing in an empty workspace?
• I am the reigning office Bocce Ball champion.

Pilgrimage to EclipseCon

I am so filled with the joy of EclipseCon that I cannot contain it, for EclipseCon is the best organized (and best-catered) conference I have been to.

Looking at the 2008 lineup, the conference program looks pretty solid, and more importantly, it seems to be devoid of those awful panel "discussions". My prayers have been answered!

As for my participation in the conference, I will be co-presenting two tutorials:
Plug-in Development 101: The Fundamentals
Plug-in Development 201: Rich Client Applications

If you are new to Eclipse or plug-in development, these tutorials are a must.

Also, if you would like to see what I have been up to lately, drop by the Embarcadero booth in the Exhibition Hall for a chat, a demo (and possibly free stuff).


PDE Does ...?

My new job takes me to interesting and beautiful destinations.



If you can name the city and the landmark in this photo, find me at EclipseCon and I will buy you a drink with an umbrella in it (or an item of equal or lesser value).

End of (My IBM) Days

Bye, Bye, Bye

Last week, I sent out the following announcement to my colleagues at IBM:

"After 7 years and 6 solid Eclipse releases, the time has come for me to leave IBM to pursue other opportunities.

My last day at the Toronto Lab is Friday August 17.

...

I leave IBM happy for the time I spent here, grateful for all the opportunities I have been given, and proud to be associated with such talented friends and colleagues.

Thank you for being part of it all.

Wassim Melhem."

PDE All Grown Up

I have been working on PDE since the Eclipse 2.0 release, and became the component lead at the beginning of the RCP movement, early in the Eclipse 3.0 cycle.

Year after year, the PDE New and Noteworthy feature list has been long and distinguished (3.0 - link to the N&N list no longer found on eclipse.org, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3), and PDE has come a long way in term of stability and performance.

PDE gets a lot of positive press and we are always thankful and flattered when that happens. To me, the most memorable one came in a blog entry entiled "PDE All Grown Up" a couple of years ago. It is my favorite because it is not over the top, it uses a great metaphor comparing PDE's growth to that of a rambunctious teenager, and it chronicles how we won over the heart and mind of a plug-in developer.

Given PDE's "No Developer Left Behind" policy, we always do all we can to accommodate and please every developer. Note that our effort should not be confused with the similarly-named, yet failed, "No Child Left Behind" program ;)

A Gang of Four

At IBM and particularly working on Eclipse, I got to work with some of the best people. For my farewell tour this week, I went to Texas for a few days to spend quality time with the Austin chapter of the Equinox and PDE teams.

With a traditional leafy backdrop, this is a picture of me with three of Eclipse's finest. From left to right: Thomas J. Watson (not to be confused with the other Thomas J. Watson), Chris Aniszczyk, unshaven/overdressed man, new father Brian Bauman.

Chapter Two

On Monday, I start my new job working as a program manager at an Eclipse add-in provider member company, where I will be leading a new commercial Eclipse-based product.

I plan to continue blogging, but with some emphasis on the challenges that I will be facing in my new role. If that gets boring, I could always go back to questioning the authority. That's always fun :)

As for my involvement with PDE, I will remain a committer, but largely in an advisory role. Time permitting, I plan to code from time to time. I will also be attending selected conferences in the next year, with OS Summit Asia being the next likely event.

Onward and Upward

Thank you for choosing PDE. Your productivity is our top priority.

PDE Does Cairo

A Right-to-Left Crisis

Every year around May, when we think we are almost done with development, multi-language testing starts and we get bombarded with Bidi bugs. Bidi bugs are inherently difficult to address, mainly because very few developers can read/write Arabic or Hebrew.

Do Arabic developers really use the Arabic version of Eclipse for Java/plug-in development or do they prefer the English one? Is it worth the investment to spend time and resources on translating components like PDE and JDT into other languages?

I am a native Arabic speaker. Even though I am not necessarily a poet, I can read and write the language pretty well. However, I am not convinced at all that an Arabic IDE is necessarily useful for Arabic developers. After all, the Eclipse javadoc is entirely in English and does not get translated, the plugin.dtd tells you that you should only use the US-ASCII character set for plug-in IDs, etc.

Here is circumstancial evidence that proves my claim . It is a screenshot from a bug reported on Eclipse 3.3:
On the Target Platform preference page, arguably the most popular preference page for plug-in developers, the parenthesis for each of the labels in the tree are misaligned. If the Arabic version Eclipse is used by Arabic Eclipse developers, how did this problem go unnoticed since Eclipse 1.0?

So here is my theory: "While it makes perfect sense to translate, for example, a banking Eclipse-based RCP application into other languages. I am not so sure translating an IDE is all that useful."

Because I was in a Bidi kind of mood, I thought it would be good to take a trip to Egypt -- as an Eclipse envoy to the middle East, if you may. So I went.

A Nile view

While in Cairo, I stayed in the lap of luxury in a high-rise condo with a Nile view to the East. The picture is taken early in the morning from my balcony. The bridge shown is the University Bridge.

To the Pyramids, To the Pyramids
My second day there, we went on a two-hour camel ride to the pyramids. To my surprise, there were nine pyramids, the three big ones I knew about and six much smaller, less photographed ones.

Cairo in June is very humid and the humidity was not very kind to my hair or my nephew's.

Riding a camel is substantially more difficult than riding an elephant, particularly as the camel stands up and sits down. But it is so much fun once you get the hang of it. The camel also goes into a nice jogging pace, which was exhilirating.

Finally, this is the gentleman whose job was to make sure the camel does not kill me ;) The camels love the camera...

Back to Reality

Cairo was the last stop in the PDE tour. I flew home on Lufthansa (in support of Peter's employer). It was good to be back in my house. Next day, I had to mow the lawn which had grown to 5 feet after a two-week absence.

PDE Does BugDay

I am so filled with the joy of BugDay that I cannot contain it. BugDay takes place this Friday and I am hoping that it will serve to prove that contributing to Eclipse is not that hard.

Bugs in the Bugzilla inbox come in varying degrees of difficulty. Whatever your Eclipse level is, you should be able to find a suitable bug and fix it in one day.

In the PDE/UI inbox, we have flagged 15 bugs with the bugday keyword. A few have already been addressed because we have keeners in the community who could not wait until Friday ;)

Take a look at the bugs and claim the one you like. If you see something that is not flagged and you want to do it, by all means go ahead and claim it. If there is a bug that bothers you for which there is no bug report open, report the bug and fix it.

Incentive
In addition to getting credit in the bug report and the code, PDE is offering an extra incentive.
We are planning to add pictures of BugDay contributors to our Committers page. We have one guideline though: The picture must have a leafy background and/or a background depicting patio furniture.

July 27
Friday is my day off, but I plan to work to make sure we have a successful BugDay. A big thanks to Chris for organizing this event.

PDE Does Zürich

Next stop in our recent PDE tri-continent tour was the beautiful city of Zürich, home of Erich Gamma and the JDT team. Consistently ranked as the most livable city in the world, it is worth mentioning that it is also one of the most expensive cities in the world. You know there is no messing around in Zürich when you see that the ATM does not dispense less than 100 CHF (~$87 CAD).

Zürich - now with 20% less bustle
The IBM lab has been fabled in story and song as "an office overlooking charming old-town Zürich, with the bustle of medieval commerce outside and the thump of techno from the record store downstairs."

This description may have been true in the '90s, but it is evident in the pictures below that the hustle and bustle levels have been degrading steadily over the past few years, a fact that Al Gore would probably attribute to global warming.

A Conversation with Erich
I met with Erich to discuss the state of Jazz, but that's all top-secret stuff, so I can't give any details ;)

We also discussed the PDE 3.3 features, and Erich expressed his fondness of the new cheat sheet editor and the command composer.

Seeing how easy it has become to author cheat sheets, I think it should be a requirement for all EclipseCon tutorial exericses next year to be in the form of cheat sheets. No more MS Word docs please.

Note that the "We love the new PDE cheat sheet authoring tools" club already has an Austin chapter. If you would like to start a PDE club in your home town, let us know ;)

The Pink House
While in Zürich, we stayed in the lap of luxury at the house of JDT/UI's Martin Aeschlimann, a contemporary and a good friend. Here is a picture of us outside of what is rumored to be the only pink residence in all of continental Europe.

Next Stop: Africa

After two days in Zürich, we took the train back to Frankfurt where Chris and I parted ways. He headed back to the United States and I flew to Africa for the "PDE Does Cairo" adventure.

PDE Does Heidelberg

En route to Zurich in our recent PDE tri-continent tour, Chris insisted on staying in the German town of Heidelberg. I believe his exact words were: "If we don't go to Heidelberg, I am going to die." So we went :)



It was a nice university town with a lot of young people walking around. It had a big castle and much like every other European town I have been to, "a river runs through it."

After a week of eating and no exercise in India, we worked out at the hotel gym and then went on a nice jog along the river.

"Free" Internet in Germany
Later that night, we both needed internet access. I wanted to fix a regression, and Chris wanted to see what every person on Earth is up to on Facebook.

Instead of paying 20 Euros/person for internet access at the hotel, Chris suggested we walk to one of the restaurants/bars downtown Heidelberg where we can enjoy a nice frosty beverage and where the "internet is free." I had my doubts about anything being free, but Chris had been there before and he knows everything, so we walked.

The rain started pouring and we had no umbrella, yet we kept walking. 25 minutes in the rain later, we got to a bar. We sat down to enjoy the free internet, and here is a picture of a very wet Chris looking perplexed when he realized that nothing is free in the world today.

As we walked back, a defensive Chris kept saying "But it was free last time. It was free". In a patronizing tone, I kept replying: "I am sure it was, Chris. I am sure it was."

Netbeans Getting More Popular

Have you been to a conference where some presenter asks to see a show of hands of how many people use Eclipse vs. Netbeans vs. IntelliJ vs. VI?

I have and the result is almost always the same. Hundreds of Eclipse users raise their hand and VI/Netbeans are at 4 or 5 people apiece.

Good news for Netbeans though. From my seat at JAX India the other day, I saw about 10 Netbeans users raise their hand (including 3 Sun Employees). So we are seeing an improvement there. The Eclipse count was still in the hundreds.

You have to give credit to the Netbeans evangelists (and EclipseZone) though for creating the illusion that the Eclipse-Netbeans competition is a dead heat.

Where Has the Innovation Gone?

A while back, our friends over at EclipseZone asked the musical question 'Where has the JDT innovation gone?'. I am not going to link to that thread because it was unfair, uninformed and a complete waste of time.

To anyone who asks: "Where is the innovation? Where is the innovation?", I say: "Here is your damn innovation!" :)

PDE Does India

The Conference

Eclipse Forum India came to a close on Thursday. Chris and I presented an 8-hour tutorial and it was packed, which confirms my theory that "Everybody Loves Plug-ins."

It is clear from the Q&A that Eclipse development is big in India. The questions were very advanced and they were non-stop. The coffee breaks were not much of a break, as the audience stormed the stage to ask more questions. It was a lot of fun.

On a personal level, the experience was pretty flattering. Some people had driven hours to come see Chris and myself talk. Many people in the audience were also familiar with our blogs and were looking forward to meet us in person.

By the end of the day, we were completely exhausted, but here is a picture of how fresh Chris and I looked like earlier in the day:



Eclipse Forum India was a very well-organized event. Thank you to Masoud, Dilip, Neeru and the rest of the JAX team for their hospitality and for going above and beyond to make sure we were well taken care of.

The Elephant Ride
One of the items on my "Things to do before I die" list is to ride an elephant, and this wish came true in India.
Here is Chris and I roaming the streets of Mysore on an elephant named "Ruby". The grin on my face says it all.

Pashminas, Pashminas, Pashminas

Having just won a $100,000 prize, Chris decided to blow all the prize money on pashminas. With the help of one of the local ladies, we went to one of the Bangalore shops, where we were knee-deep in shawls and where I learned that bartering is a blood sport.

This whole experience has been a blast.

THANK YOU, JAX INDIA

We are currently in Zurich, so stay tuned for the next installement of the "PDE Does ..." Series.

Indian Idol

I am in Bangalore for Eclipse Forum India 2007.

According to initial counts, 250 people have signed up for the workshops and there are 700 unique registrants for the main conference days.

So we should expect a pretty good turnout for the PDE workshop, since everybody loves plug-ins.

While in town, I am also looking forward to watching season 3 of Indian Idol. The bellman at my hotel tells me that this season we have two new judges and that one of them is guaranteed to be as mean and venomous as Simon Cowell.