Hard, Soft, Weak and Phantom

The title sounds so exciting until I explain I'm referring to Java references. I was asked to explain weak references in an interview. I'm so careful with my words I said I couldn't explain it well enough.

The sum total my knowledge is that I can create a WeakHashMap whereby the keys are weakly referenced, and thus objects are able to be garbage collected. I gather it might be useful for a caching, but I've always used third party caching implementations. And quite frankly, performance issues I encounter are generally latency, not memory problems.

Pardon the expression, but I thought this explanation was rather weak, so I passed.

Naturally I wish to rectify this abysmal lack of understanding, and I found a rather nice summary of the reference types here.

Soft references were previously unknown to me, although if the following is true they seem more useful that Weak; "in practice softly reachable objects are generally retained as long as memory is in plentiful supply".

Routine which is not "a rut"

There was a time, many years ago, when it was possible to predict my location and activities to the hour. Even weekends.

When I had just started working at Sausage Software, newly moved to Melbourne and I was (unbeknownst to myself at a conscious level) quite happy. Happiness that comes from doing what you love, feeling secure and feeling that many doors are open.

Compared to the stress of final year engineering, too busy to have a job and often running out of money to the point where food became a luxury.. it was much easier to be happy. The intervening years have spoiled me to the point where the simple things are no longer appreciated as much.

I welcome the idea of a predictable pattern of work, play, sleep, etc. I have learned the correct balance in the past year. I hope :)

Routine only becomes a rut if you don't enjoy it.

the revolution is here

It's winter, evening, Toronto. I have arrived.

Actually I arrived here at the start of the week, and possibly already have a job. This would be nice, it's important to keep busy and stay out of trouble ;)

Now it's time to catch up with everyone.. though after being put through the wringer all week - recruiters and interviews - I think the phone will be off the hook for a little while first.