This is one of those seemingly simple concepts that never really gets elaborated. Usually a student learning Java for the first time is told. “Write the following:”
public class Person
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
System.out.println("Hello World!");
}
}
“Don’t ask why, just do it.” Because of that, I’ve heard this question more than a few times in the last couple years.
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I was recently visited by a friend who is also an IT professional. Some time during the visit, I casually made the recommendation that programmers should take a drafting course. I was a bit surprised to receive a contradictory opinion, but it was well received and has forced me to further justify my position in my own mind.

My case is rather simple; (more…)

I love coding in text editors because I don’t have to think about all the extra stuff. That’s not to say that I don’t love code completion and auto-generation tools, but it’s nice to sit down with just just you, a cup of hot apple cider, and ASCII. There’s no better tool for this than Notepad++, in my opinion.

It boast an expansive built in syntax-higlighting library and great tools for automating some of your frequented commands. But a major problem, aside from the inability to do multi-line regex stuff, is the way comments are set up. I found out that I love the fact that it shrinks them, but I hate that it uses a non-monospaced font. But you can fix it, and fast.

First open up your %APP_DATA%/Notepad++/stylers.xml file in Notepad++. The APP_DATA variable usually points to your ‘Documents and Settings/youruser/Application Data’ folder, but I could be wrong. Then do a find and replace to find “Comic Sans MS” and replace it with “”. That’s right, nothing.  Save and restart Notepad++ and you are ready to rock.

Thanks to Nathan for pointing this out to me. I’m fairly confident that he doesn’t even know I have a website. The only place I don’t talk about it, annoyingly, is at work.