For me Java 8 wasn’t a big deal … until I had to go back to Java 7. Suddenly I started missing things I started using without even realizing it. Here comes Optional<T>:

Now I have been working with the Eclipse platform for quite a while. If you do so, you already might have run into the “adaptable” mechanism the Eclipse platform provides (article on EclipseZone).

This article explains how to programmatically add a host key in Java with JSch. I did update the article early 2018, taking care of the missing argument to the add method.

Dear Google,

every now and then I come up with idea of buying another game in the play store (yes, a mobile game, for Android). So I browse and browse and finally give up again. The main entry views give me a few promoted items, which mostly are uninteresting as a game, the top lists show games which I already checked out the last time, or already bought, the recommendation show hardly any interesting games. The same is true for non-game apps (I wouldn’t always call them productive apps ;-) ).

What is so easy with a standard JEE setup becomes quite painful using OSGi. Although there are very interesting projects and approaches like OSGi enRoute, Pax Web or Equinox JSP (and probably a few more), taking a step beyond “Hello World” starts to get quite painful.