Mass–energy equivalence (software)

After extensive observation of software development, my friend Tomas got a very interesting interpretation of Albert Einstein’s mass–energy equivalence:

E = mc²

Interpretation:

Enterprise = lots of middle class

Bored? Want some programming thrill?

“It’s what I call ‘mental masturbation’, when you engage is some pointless intellectual exercise that has no possible meaning.” – Linus Torvalds

Currently I have some idle time at my job (waiting for a new project), so I thought I don’t want to get too rusty. Programmer has to program… I have found Project Euler, a site dedicated to math/programming problems by Colin Hughes (aka Euler).

So if you want to exercise your head (and fingers) look no more: http://projecteuler.net

To make things more interesting, I’m solving some of the problems in C++, not my first programming language :)
So far I have 17 solutions under my belt, some of which use brute force so I might get back to them some time.

Happy hacking :)

Honeymoon in Crete

Here are some photos of Crete, that me and my wife made during our honeymoon (click to see more):

Singleton in Java – the proper way

Update after some comments: this post is not a discussion whether to use Singleton or not. It’s not a discussion on why Singleton might be an anti-pattern. It’s just an example on an alternative implementation of Singleton in Java. Just that.

There are two classic ways to implement Singleton pattern in Java: public final instance field or static factory method to create/get instance.

However there is one more, probably the best way to do it if you are using Java >= 1.5. You can use Enum – this way you get Singleton functionality easily and don’t have to think about serialization as you get it for free:

package electro;

public enum YourSingleton {
	INSTANCE;

	public void doStuff(String stuff) {
		System.out.println("Doing " + stuff);
	}
}

Now you can use it and be completely sure it’s Singleton:

YourSingleton.INSTANCE.doStuff("some stuff");

Thanks to Joshua Bloch and his great book “Effective Java Second Edition“.