Don't break the build. Test it!

The most basic rule of developing software as a team is, "Don't break the build."

If you commit code or other project files that make the build break, you've messed up everybody's work.

Today, I committed some code when I was asked and It broke the build. Once someone had updated, they could no longer build the web app we're working on.

So, never commit without testing that the build works!

Struts styleId (What a way to name a form)

I'm new to Struts. I'm in my second week of using/learning Struts 1.2. Any framework, technology, pattern, or what-have-you has its weirdnesses.

Here's the first really weird thing that I've found in Struts: To give an identifier to an <html:form> tag you set the styleId attribute.

Here's some background: In an HTML page you can place a <form> tag. This allows you to get information from the user. The Struts method of placing a form in a page is the <html:form> tag shown above. In HTML, if you want to give the form an Id you would do something like this:

<form id="someId"> form stuff </form>

In Struts you would write:

<html:form styleId="someId"> form stuff </html:form>

So much for reasonable names.

Purpose

I have this idea that it would be helpful to list some of the problems that I run into in my young career as a Software Engineer. In the future I will post articles on mistakes, difficulties, and solutions that I encounter in doing my job.

Come back soon.