I seem to have come to a very happy point in latest design/implementation foo, and it does and does not bode well for future such work. A lot of my work will be translating a process in Transact-SQL stored procedures to Java. Some of the set processing ways of SQL don't map well to modern programming methods, so it's been a little bit of a struggle. Plus there are no real gurus around who have done this sort of thing before, so it's the make-it-up-as-we-go-along pattern.
Over the last few days I've been thinking about one particular aspect of it, experimenting, etc. I mostly had an idea where it would end up, but not entirely. And then yesterday I added a method, a light went off and I figured out how everything would tie together. A few more hours of work, setting up some mock objects and testing, and it actually does work. Sweet.
Fortunately (?), we decided to tackle one of the most difficult processes in the system for our first one. So once this is done it's all downhill from here!
I've also been re-reading Effective Java. This is probably one of the most practical, concise and immediately useful books I own. It's thoughtful without being academic, and demonstrative without pages and pages of code. The closest Perl book to it would probably be (surprise!) Effective Perl Programming.
