Tim Hanson

Quite a few articles have been written introducing the new language features in JDK 1.5. In this article, we're going to go a little deeper and provide tips on how to effectively use those features. Introduction During the beta period for JDK 1.5, we worked on a 1.5 Java compiler for BEA's Java IDE. As we implemented various new features, people would begin exploiting them in new ways, some clever, some clearly candidates for a list of what not to do. The compiler itself used 1.5 features, so we gained direct experience in maintaining 1.5 code as well. As we mentioned, this is not an introductory article. You should know roughly what the new features are, and we'll talk about some of the interesting, hopefully non-obvious implications and uses. These tips are a somewhat random collection of things we ran into, loosely grouped by language feature. We'll start with the... (more)

Exploring the Architecture of Javelin with a Dependency Structure Matrix

Javelin is a compiler framework written entirely in Java. It lets developers support new languages or extend current languages. It also provides interfaces to the parsing and compilation process. For instance, an IDE's editor can take advantage of Javelin to support syntax highlighting, code completions, and refactoring. Javelin could be extended to compile languages like XSLT, XQuery, and PHP. It already contains a Java compiler and an XML Schema compiler, which is fully integrated into BEA Workshop and provides support for various editing and compiling tasks. The JSP compiler a... (more)