Joel Test: Applicability in 2014?

I think the Joel Test is still very applicable in 2014, almost 15 years later.  While organizations should be considering doing more than the list states in its brief yes/no questions, the Joel Test serves as a minimum baseline that organizations cannot dismiss or argue with.  Therefore, I don't believe the Joel Test needs updating. 

However, some worthy, relatively recent elaborations on the Joel Test include:

• The Joel Test – Updated for 2010
• The Joel Test updated for 2013

Being a consultant, I find the Joel Test applicable to new projects I join, rather than applying it to an organization.  When leading a project, it is also a good checklist.

Where do you find WebSphere Application Server port information?

For WAS 8.5.5.2, to find port information, on the left-side of the admin GUI, Servers > Server Types > WebSphere application servers.

Then, on the main part of the GUI, choose your server, then Configuration tab > Communication sub-section > Ports

Notes on "The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)"

• Joel Spolsky's blog post
• Unicode is a "character set", which does not state how it is stored
• Misconception:  That Unicode is simply a 16-bit code where each character takes 16 bits and therefore there are 65,536 possible characters; Unicode is not an encoding
• In Unicode, letters map to "code points", e.g. U+0041 rather than bits, e.g. 0100 0001
• Different fonts display code points differently
• Unicode can define more than 65,536 characters
• In UTF-8, an "encoding" (how string is stored in memory, disk, etc.), every code point from 0-127 is stored in a single byte. Only code points 128 and above are stored using 2, 3, up to 6 bytes.
• UTF-16 stores in two bytes only, not more than 2 bytes
• It does not make sense to have a string without knowing what encoding it uses.  You simply cannot display it correctly or even figure out where it ends

Connecting to Nexus 7 device for debugging on Windows 8.1

While the instructions Using Hardware Devices and OEM USB Drivers are adequate, here's my experience setting up my 2nd generation Nexus 7 on Windows 8.1 Pro.

When connecting the device to my computer's USB port, Windows does recognize it and installs drivers, but treats the device as a Music Player:

At this point, adb does not recognize the device for development purposes:

However, after following the instructions for the Google USB Driver, I get the following: 

and from adb, I do see the device listed when doing the command "adb devices".

Registering device for Windows Phone 8 development

In order for the phone to be registered for development, it also needs to be browse-able in File Explorer when the phone is connected.  In my experience, the most common problem is assuming that any USB cable is compatible when in fact some cables are only useful for charging:  Windows Phone 8 is not detected by your computer

When there are problems you may see the following screens:

When the phone is properly detected, you will see the following:

Upon clicking "Register", if your phone is also connected to the Internet, you will see the following in moments and be able to deploy your applications to the device:

Setting up Apache Cordova/PhoneGap

Based on following the steps in the official PhoneGap documentation, the following document augments that information with more details, specifically around setting up on Windows 8 and for developing Windows Phone 8/Android apps:

Setting up Apache Cordova/PhoneGap (version controlled)

OutOfMemoryError with Java

Recently had to investigate an OutOfMemoryError issue possibly caused by my Java code.  Some tools/information I have found useful so far are:

1. VisualVM - profiler that you probably already have installed.  Check for <JAVA_HOME>/bin/jvisualvm.exe
   
• If you have problems installing plugins that you need, for example, as above, download and install manually  
• If you encounter a "Cannot connect to service" error, consider attempting with JConsole first by running <JAVA_HOME>/bin/jconsole -debug to determine the reason why;  Troubleshooting connection problems in JConsole
2. Generations - describes Java memory management.  It will help you interpret the graphs in the Visual GC plugin
3. Understanding Weak References - never heard of weak references in the context of Java?  Me too