Contrarians reject the majority opinion and often have personal reasons to degrade Agile. These writings often disqualify themselves through bias, thus failing to benefit the community. But non-contrarians - practitioners who tend to support the majority view - may be in the best position to drag the skeletons out of the closet.

A mixin is a collection of methods that can be injected into a class. The mixin technique consists in building classes by composing reusable mixins. The advantages and disadvantages of the technique are very much debated. I will focus on the negative aspects.

The next version of ScalaTest will include a set of matchers. These matchers demonstrate the kind of DSL notation you can create in Scala. In this post, I give a sneak preview of ScalaTest matchers, and ask for feedback.

The latest version of ScalaTest includes a trait named SpecDasher, which when mixed into a Spec facilitates a more concise expression of specification-style tests. It is deprecated, however, and may be removed in a future release depending on user feedback. What's your opinion?

The latest version of ScalaTest, a testing tool for Scala and Java developers, includes a concise way to test private methods and support for behavior-driven development.

Old 2.0 (I've got more; stop me if you've heard them before.)

Busting some myths that have sprung up around Scala.

Artima's first published book, Programming in Scala, made its bookstore debut last week at the Devoxx conference in Antwerp, Belgium, where it sold out. Twice.

One of the most significant new features in the upcoming Java Persistence API 2.0 specification is a type-safe criteria-based query API. In a recent blog post, JSR 317 spec lead Linda DeMichiel provides a tutorial introduction to this new feature.

In a recent essay, Martin Fowler wonders whether the advent of domain-specific languages will fulfill the long sought-after era of business users being able to craft their own software.

Publicly-held corporations ostensibly serve the people they sell products to, but are required by law to actually serve their shareholders. Privately-held companies only serve the customer.

In the latest installment in his series on real-world Scala, Jonas Bonér describes how Scala's mixin composition assists in creating type-safe solutions to cross-cutting application concerns.

Google recently released a prototype environment, Native Client, that allows native applications to run safely inside a browser. The effort joins similar tools, such as Adobe's Alchemy, that aim to merge existing native applications and libraries into Web applications.

In this interview with Artima, Octavian Tanase, Sun's senior director for the Java platform group, explains why JavaFX is relevant for today's Web-based applications, how developers and designers can work together with JavaFX, and the sorts of applications JavaFX is especially suited for.

In a recent essay, CIO Magazine's Esther Schindler flips the usual question about programmer excellence, and tries to find if traditional software metrics have anything to do with identifying the least desirable member of a development team.

The advent of the Java Kernel in Sun's latest JDK update was but the first step toward modularizing the entire Java SE platform, writes Mark Reinhold in a series of blog posts. Reinhold introduces the problems of a modular Java SE, reviews existing module systems, and outlines the proposed direction for Java modularization.