The Patch Game

One problem with gadgets of today is that they seem to need constant patching. Barely a day passes without some automatic update service is telling me to download and apply a patch. Sometimes the patch provides new functionality, but most of the time it simply tries to fix functionality that were there from the start but isn't working properly. With more and more things shipping with small embedded computers this is starting to become quite the time-sink. It's also annoying. And it feels like it is only getting worse.

I'm really tired of patching my cell phone, the iPod, the other iPod, the digital camera, the GPS, the cell phone again, the computer, the Wii; even the damn car needs software updates! Why is it so hard to ship stuff with software that is actually working? Has technology grown too complex? Are products rushed to the market to beat the competition and the software development process isn't coping? Are product developers getting sloppy since they know they can fix most things very late in the product life-cycle? What is the problem here?

Enjoying an Ingenious Life

As it turns out, my friend, and Citerus consultant, Rickard Johansson has stopped boiling frogs, and started to enjoy an ingenious life.

Not a bad choice I'd say.

Fulhack Annotation 1.0

Introducing Fulhack Annotation 1.0 for Java - finally you can come clean with your fulhacks!

Download the Fulhack Annotation jar and drop it on your classpath. You can now annotate your fulhacks like this:

@Fulhack(blameDeveloper = "patrik",
         badExcuse = "Didn't have time to make it nice",
         hack = "Perhaps use same solution as for Cat, it looks OK.")
public void setBrownColor() {
     color = "Brown";
}

Using the Annotation Processing Tool (apt) shipping with Java 5, you can then create reports of your fulhacks by running:

apt -cp fulhack-1.0.0.jar <path-to-source-code>/*.java

Fulhack is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

Enjoy!

Download fulhack-1.0.0.zip