Knowledge Base

Terracotta started as a JVM clustering tool (with notoriously clever bytecode instrumentation) before pivoting to distributed caching. Now effectively the server component behind Ehcache, owned by Software AG. The cluste

an open source library for providing throwaway, lightweight instances of services like databases, message brokers, browsers, or anything else that can be dockerized.

a library for creating Java console applications, working with interactive input and providing various vaguely workable input types for choices, passwords, and the like.

an algorithm for building an NFA from a regular expression using epsilon transitions to compose sub-automata. The most widely taught NFA construction, but requires epsilon-closure computation at every step.

Apache Tika - a content detection and extraction toolkit that parses metadata and text from over 1400 file types through a single unified interface; written in Java but accessible via REST server and CLI from any languag

TLA+ is a formal specification language for modeling concurrent and distributed systems, and proving their correctness.

TOON stands for "Token-oriented object notation." It's somewhat human-readable, is more terse than JSON or YAML, and is more compact than either one.

an Erlang-based distributed load tester supporting HTTP, WebSocket, XMPP, LDAP, and databases; designed for very high concurrency.

a Rust-based Webpack successor from Vercel, built into Next.js. Incremental architecture for big codebases.

the last Borland Turbo Pascal release before Delphi made it obsolete. A generation of Windows programmers learned their limits here.

a statically typed superset of JavaScript developed by Microsoft. It adds optional type annotations, interfaces, generics, and compile-time checking to JS, then transpiles to plain JavaScript for execution. That transpil

Apache UIMA - Unstructured Information Management Architecture; a framework for analyzing text and extracting structured information; where Tika extracts raw text, UIMA reasons about it

UML stands for the \"Unified Modeling Language,\" a graphical notation for software development. Depending on the shop using it, it's either a useful aid or a life-consuming cult.

Valhalla is a Java project to augment the object model with "value objects," combining the abstractions of object-oriented programming with the performance characteristics of primitives. Has been worked on for a looong t

a Go HTTP load testing tool and library designed for constant-rate attacks, good for SLO/rate-limit validation.

IBM's Java IDE and the spiritual ancestor of Eclipse. Built on Smalltalk internals; discontinued in 2007.

Symantec's pioneering Java IDE and InfoWorld's 1997 Product of the Year. Passed to WebGain and discontinued in 2002.

Vite is a frontend build tool for JavaScript, designed around rapid development cycles. It's framework-agnostic and says it has "sensible defaults," much like most tools in its space.