Buy me a Beer :)

/*
 * The file is licenced under Revision 42 of the Beerware Licence.
 * <joakim.ohlrogge[at]agical.com> wrote this file. As long as you retain this
 * notice you can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day,
 * and you think this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return.
 * -- Joakim Ohlrogge
 */

Drying up widget creation

I continue to be amazed how Scala lets me keep my code DRY (if I care to do it the tools are there, I just need to look for them). One of the reasons that Scala allows this more than Java is that Scala supports functional programming. One thing that makes Scala interesting is that Scala blends Functional Programming and Object Oriented programming. This is often overwhelming but it really keeps the tools you need close at hand.

To start with I had to be torn kicking and screaming from my beloved object orientation. I was told I suffer from the Stockholm syndrome which was quite a hilarious way to put it. Especially since I live in Stockholm and was immediately comforted by the same person with the words “I suffer from it too, I still love C++”. So I thought maybe leaving my comfort zone is not so bad?

Yesterday it payed off and I experienced a kind of flow that was new to me in Scala. I thought I’d share that experience here step by step. Don’t expect to be blown away by my Scala-skills, If you want to be impressed in that way there are other blogs :) What follows is a real world example of  things coming together into a moment of productiveness. I guess another real world example of applying Scala to a problem could not harm?

Making SWT shine with Scala

At Agile 2008 I was calmly coding together with Daniel Brolund in the open space area. We were interrupted by a guy that asked us if we did any coding in Ruby and if we did he will hold a lightning-talk about a framework he had put together to create SWT-gui:s using JRuby. Interestingly enough I had thought about how GUI-coding could probably be improved in a language such as Ruby so I reluctantly stopped what I was doing and watched the lightning talk. This was the first time I ever saw Glimmer and it totally blew me away!