Drab as a fool, aloof as a bard

Yes, it turns out I’ve been working with Java a lot recently, and it’s a language I like a lot. I am also immensely fond of the Eclipse IDE which I use when writing in it — if Eclipse was any closer to being self-aware, I could ask it for its view of me as a programmer and give you that too. Nevertheless, I have bumped into a few small issues, or at least found myself asking some pertinent questions which are collectively worthy of a blog post. In doing so I believe I am nicely rounding out the list of programming languages I have found myself using and blogging about over the last few months, including BASH, PHP, Python, and Perl.

It seems that when using a search engine, information about Request Tracker (“RT” for short) is harder to find than information about other pieces of software. I could give RT the benefit of the doubt and say this is because no one has any problems with it and thus never needs to mention it, but the fact that it is thousands of lines of Perl / Mason code means that claim would be difficult to justify. Admittedly the code is well- (and humorously-) commented, and the “problemettes” I describe below seem to be largely due to user error.