Sticker Winners!

Here are the winning entries for the first 'Win A Sticker' contest.

Mike V in St Louis, USA wrote a jaiku (a "Java haiku", a term for which he claims ownership):

Simple in nature, No API required, Gets simple jobs done.

Matthew T in St Louis, USA provided a mini-simulator for a "POJO stick".

Kishore R in Hyderabad, India offered, "POJOs are freedom! A POX on your house, XML!"

Torbjorn E in Oslo, Norway wrote in: "Anything but POJOs on my MOBO? Are you loco?"

Neal Gafter, author of Java Puzzlers and ambassador in the Java community, sent in (*):

POJOs have some mojo, but I *heart* closures.

Congratulations to the winners!

(*) Did not actually send in such entries -- but if they contact me at codetojoy @t gmail, I'll send them a sticker anyway.

ps. Several people have asked: yes, indeed, Eric received a sticker for coining the original phrase.

POJOs Gone Wild and the 2nd Law of Thermoblogs

A reminder and a few random notes:

POJOs Gone Wild

The "Win a Sticker" contest ends on June 29! Enter today... Remember, international readers, that CodeToJoy pays shipping.

Captain Neato, Twenty Thousand Bytecodes under the Sea

Here is a neat Java Powered Submarine.

Rumor has it that the team tried the software in C++, but the sub sank due to memory leaks. (not really)

Then they tried it with Scheme, but the sub kept lisping at 20 degrees to starboard.

This might be fun. Share your ideas why they couldn't use Ruby, JavaFX, etc...

The 2nd law of Thermoblogs: Entropy == Flame wars

This law of the Net is entirely isomorphic to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Simply perform these substitutions:

• the "system" and "process" becomes the "blog" (or "post")
  
• "entropy" becomes the "flame war" (or "flames")
  

e.g. 1. To paraphrase Clausius:

The flames of a blog post not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium.

e.g. 2. To paraphrase Bazarov:

The law of existence of flame wars in every blog and of its never decreasing in isolated blogs for any posts whatsoever.

As illustrated on Cafe Au Lait via the "initially interesting yet doomed to thermal death" post on Checked Exceptions