Iulian Dogariu

It’s never too late to read introductory books on Eclipse. More specifically, this book. You may be missing out on some pretty cool features. For example, how could I miss out on something as useful as the Scrapbook?

Essentially a Scrapbook page in Eclipse allows you to type code and execute on the fly. You don’t need to create a function or even a class. This is really sweet if you want to try out something quick and dirty, before incorporating it into your code. In this respect, it resembles the REPL of LISP or Ruby or Perl. Plus you get most of the benefits of the Java editor, such as code completion

To create a scrapbook page in Eclipse 3.2, go to File->New->Other… then choose Java -> Run/Debug -> Scrapbook page.

A newsletter from the Iaşi police reports that community officers have been visiting secondary schools in Iaşi to warn students of the perils of using unlicened software and illegally copied media. The police officers introduced the 7th-graders to the Linux operating system and the thousands of free applications that accompany it.

Hats off! This is really the first time I hear about officials actually mentioning the Open-Source alternative, in the context of unlicensed commercial software.

For my unaware readers… This happens in a country whose Government itself signs “strategic partnerships” with Microsoft and spends many millions of taxpayer €’s on MS licences in the educational system, in spite of the tight budgets, underpaid staff, lack of teachers in rural areas, and the otherwise deplorable state of Romanian schooling.

The text of the news item, in Romanian, is mirrored here.